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H   CAROLINA    STATE    UNIVERSITY    LIBRAPlfS 


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1367G5 


This  book  may  be  kept  out  TWO  WEEKS 
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JAN  2  5  1965    ■ 


50M— May-54— Form    3 


Carolus  Linnaeus 


C  A  RO  L  VS 

LI  N  NAEV5 


BY 


EDWARD     LEE    G  KE  ENE 

PK    B         L  LD 

FORMERLY     FROFBJJOR    OF   BOTANY 
IN    THE    VNIVER>yiTY    OF   CALIFORNIA 

PITTONIA 

Lea.f*le"tj      of   B  o  t  aurk  i  c  a.  1      Ob  5  e  r'-va.feion  j 
L  aLn.dn\aLr»k5     of   Botanical    Science    &c 


■yrx 


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I 


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BAKTON  AV^ARREN   EVERMANN    ?h  D 

tSTaii^or*    or 

AMERICAN    FOOT)    AND    GAME    FISHES        THE 

FI5HE>3    OF    PORTO      RICO 

Lop  Ko  tKe  Q^xi  a.i  1      &,  c 


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H    I  LA  D  E  L   F 

H   I  A. 

CHKI>ST  OTHER 

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Copyright,  1912,  by 
Christopher  Sower  Company 


C  OKI  ENT5 


PAGE 

Introduction 5 

Lineage  and  Childhood  of  Linn^us 7 

School,  College  and  University  Years     ....  21 

Journey  to  Lapland 38 

Journey  to  Germany  and  Holland 39 

Practises  Medicine  in  Stockholm 48 

Appointed  Professor  at  Upsala 51 

Influence  of  Linn^us  upon  Botany 52 

Linn^us  as  a  Zoologist 67 

Linn^us  as  an  Evolutionist 73 


(3) 

1367G5 


INTRODVCTION 


, 

^»   •^'VS^I 

1 

HE  chapters  comprising  this  Uttle 
volume  consist,  primarily,  of  an 
address  delivered  by  Dr.  Edward 
Lee  Greene  at  a  joint  meeting  of 
the  Washington  Academy  of  Sciences,  the 
Biological  Society  of  Washington  and  the 
Botanical  Society  of  Washington,  held  at 
Hubbard  Memorial  Hall,  on  the  occasion  of 
the  two  hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of 
Carl  Linne  (Carolus  Linnaeus),  May  23,  1907. 

The  chapter  on  Linnaeus  as  a  zoologist 
was  contributed  by  Dr.  William  Healey  Dall 
as  a  part  of  the  same  memorial  exercises. 
The  chapter  on  Linnaeus  as  an  evolutionist 
was  published  by  Dr.  Greene  in  the  Proceed- 
ings of  the  Washington  Academy  of  Sciences, 
Vol.  XI,  March  31,  1909. 

The  two  addresses  and  the  special  paper  are 
all  here  printed  in  the  form  in  which  they  were 
originally  presented  and  practically  without 
revision. 

It  may  be  doubted  if  any  naturalist  has 
exerted  a  greater  influence  in  the  world  than 
has  Linnaeus;  certainly  none  other  has  given 

(5) 


6  INTRODUCTION 

to  the  study  of  animals  and  plants  an  impetus 
so  far-reaching  or  so  long-sustained. 

Whatever  we  may  claim  to  have  been 
accomplished  by  those  naturalists  who  pre- 
ceded him,  we  must  admit  that  to  Linnaeus 
we  owe  the  essential  features  of  our  present 
system  of  naming  the  various  species  of 
animals  and  plants,  and  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  Linnaeus  is  the  father  of  systematic 
zoology  and  botany. 

The  personality,  the  biography,  of  one  who 
has  done  great  things  in  the  world  is  always 
interesting.  The  study  of  the  lives  of  such 
men  is  one  of  the  most  potent  factors  in 
moulding  the  life  of  the  student,  filling  it 
with  clean  ambitions  and  leading  to  right 
thinking  and  rational  living. 

Professor  Greene  has  told  the  story  of  the 
life  of  the  great  Swede  in  a  way  that  will 
prove  not  only  entertaining  and  instructive 
to  all  who  are  interested  in  Nature,  but  also 
in  language  delightful  in  its  simplicity  and 
literary  charm. 

Barton  Warren  Evermann. 


CAROLUS    LINNiEUS 


LINEAGE   AND    CHILDHOOD    OF    LINN^US 


HE  personality  of  Linnaeus  and  his 
luminous  career  as  a  scientific  man 
make  a  topic  much  too  large  to 
be  presented  even  in  mere  outline 
within  the  limits  of  an  hour.  If  this  were 
an  assemblage  of  botanists  exclusively,  still 
would  the  time  be  too  short  for  the  worthy 
consideration,  not  only  of  Linnaeus  as  a 
botanist  in  general,  but  of  his  services  to  any 
one  only  of  the  several  departments  of  the 
science  which  it  is  his  glory  greatly  to  have 
advanced.  But  then  a  botanist,  a  very  great 
botanist,  he  was  also  much  more  than  that. 
I  have  a  fancy — it  may  be  more  and  deeper 
than  a  fancy — that  a  great  man  in  whatsoever 
profession,  a  man  of  power  in  any  branch  of 
science,  is  greater  than  the  science  to  which 
he  devotes  himself;  that  he  himself  personally 
is  of  more  moment,  and  ought  to  be  of  deeper 
interest  than  his  science;  yes,  than  all  the 
sciences  that  are  or  ever  shall  be. 

If  we  could  in  thought  divest  Linnaeus  of 
his  systematic  botany  and  zoology,  we  should 

(7) 

D.  K  HILL  LIBRARY 
North  Carolina  State  CoHecf* 


8  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

still  find  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  a  man 
of  the  highest  educational  accomplishments 
and  general  culture,  clear-headed  and  original 
as  a  thinker,  a  philosopher,  religionist,  eth- 
nologist, evolutionist,  traveller,  geographer, 
and  a  most  able  and  polished  man  of  letters. 
These  are  but  so  many  more  aspects  of  a  great 
character,  the  presentation  of  which,  one  by 
one  in  a  discourse,  might  interestedly  engage 
the  attention  of  others  besides  nature  students. 
Confronted  by  so  very  much  that  may  be 
said,  and  which  it  might  seem  ought  to  be 
said  on  this  day  dedicated  to  Linnaeus,  and 
checked  by  the  consideration  that  only  a  few 
selections  from  out  the  whole  mass  may  at 
this  hour  be  taken,  where  shall  one  begin? 
Whither  shall  one  proceed?  What  thrilling 
passages  in  a  career  so  almost  marvellous 
shall  be  left  unnoted  for  want  of  time,  and 
of  what  few  of  them  shall  the  rehearsal  be 
attempted?  Or,  reducing  these  questions 
down  to  two:  Shall  the  man  be  presented 
with  citation  of  his  struggles  with  adverse 
circumstance,  and  of  the  almost  incredible 
patience,  industry,  zeal  and  resolution  with 
which  he  conquered  and  rose  to  high  renown? 
Or  shall  one  consider  rather  the  work  of  the 
great  master  of  botanical  theory  and  taxo- 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  9 

nomic  abstraction?  There  will  not  now  be 
time  for  both;  not  even  though  attempted 
in  mere  outhne.  My  own  incUnations  favor 
choice  of  the  latter,  especially  for  today; 
yet  circumstances  indicate  that  such  a  choice 
would  here  be  also  inopportune.  Our  Wash- 
ington botanists  at  this  season  of  the  year  are 
mostly  far  afield  in  the  service  of  the  govern- 
ment. Only  a  fair  delegation  of  my  colleagues 
in  this  science  is  here  present;  and  this  en- 
lightened audience  as  a  body  I  am  persuaded 
would  much  rather  hear  something  more 
about  the  man  of  whom  all  the  world  of 
education  and  of  culture  has  heard  more  or 
less.  Even  on  my  own  part  I  have  already 
expressed  the  view  that  the  man  should  first 
be  known,  that  we  may  the  better  comprehend 
his  deeds. 

When  Linnaeus,  on  the  twenty-third  of 
May  two  hundred  years  ago,  was  born,  I 
think  it  had  long  been  predetermined  that  he 
should  be  a  botanist,  and  one  of  high  dis- 
tinction. When  I  say  predetermined,  I  do 
not  use  the  word  in  any  sense  of  theological 
predestination  or  of  astrological  forecast.  I 
have  but  the  recognized  principles  of  natural 
heredity  in  mind.  And,  unless  I  err,  there  was 
more  inherited  by  Linnaeus  than  his  biogra- 


10  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

phers  seem  to  have  guessed.  They  all  repeat 
it  that  the  father,  the  Reverend  Nils  Linnaeus, 
a  Swedish  country  clergyman,  was  fond  of 
plants,  and  had  a  choice  garden  wherein  he 
took  his  daily  pastime;  and  that  in  this 
garden  his  first-born  child  developed  those  pre- 
dilections which  at  length  became  the  despair 
of  the  father,  yet  led  the  son  eventually  far 
up  the  heights  of  fame.  All  this  is  authen- 
tic, and  well  told  by  the  several  biographers; 
but  there  is  more  in  that  history  which,  to 
me,  seems  well  worth  telling,  and  will  give 
light  upon  the  derivation  of  Linnseus's  genius 
as  a  botanist  and  upon  his  accomplishments 
as  a  man  of  learning  and  of  letters.  Let  us 
go  back  to  the  second  generation  of  his  ances- 
try and  glance  at  men,  women  and  social 
conditions. 

The  grandfather  of  Linnaeus,  on  his  father's 
side,  was  a  Swedish  peasant,  by  name  Ingemar 
Bengtson.  His  wife  had  two  brothers  who 
became  university  graduates,  were  afterwards 
clergymen  of  some  distinction,  and  men  of 
reputation  in  the  world  of  learning.  These 
granduncles  of  our  Linnaeus  interest  us  be- 
cause of  their  having  figured  somewhat  con- 
spicuously as  stars  of  destiny  in  relation  to 
him  long  before  his  birth.     They  even  had 


CAROLUS  LINNAEUS  11 

somewhat  to  do  with  the  originating  of  the 
family  name  Linnaeus.  But  for  their  influ- 
ence in  this  direction  it  is  probable  that 
their  grandnephew,  then  unborn,  distinguish- 
ing himself  as  he  did,  would  have  been 
known  in  histor}^  not  as  Carolus  Linnaeus 
but  by  some  other  name.  That  both  these 
granduncles  of  Linnaeus  were  Greek  scholars 
seems  attested  by  the  fact  that,  in  assum- 
ing a  new  family  name,  after  the  mediaeval 
usage  of  those  who  arose  from  the  humble 
estate  of  peasantry  to  the  aristocracy  of 
learning,  they  chose  the  Greek  name 
Tiliander.  They  were  Karl  and  Sven 
Tiliander.  In  their  boyhood  they  had  been 
known  simply  as  Karl  and  Sven  Svenson,  and 
if  they  had  remained  uneducated,  and  in 
the  same  lowly  and  simple  estate  in  which 
they  were  born,  they  would  have  been  known 
by  those  names  to  the  end  of  their  lives. 
Karl  Tiliander  rose  to  wealth  and  station, 
adopted  a  coat  of  arms,  in  a  word,  was  an 
aristocrat,  but  died  childless.  His  grand- 
nephew,  however,  born  ten  years  after  his 
death,  was  named  in  his  honor.  In  fact, 
Karl  Tiliander  and  Karl  Linnaeus  are,  in 
meaning,  the  same  name  precisely.  Now 
the  other  greatuncle,  Sven  Tiliander,  was  a 


12  CAROLUS  LJNN^US 

minister,  had  a  family  of  minister's  sons 
to  educate,  and  was  generous  enough  to 
receive  as  one  of  his  own  sons  his  sister's  son 
Nils,  to  be  educated  with  them.  This  peasant 
boy,  Nils  Ingemarsson,  remember,  is  the  pre- 
destined father  of  our  Linnaeus.  But  this 
boy's  school  scene,  lying  away  back  almost 
upon  the  edge  of  mediaeval  times,  and  afar 
in  the  north  of  Europe,  well  towards  the 
country  of  the  midnight  sun,  is  a  pleasant 
scene,  before  which  we  must  pause  a  moment. 
It  is  in  the  midst  of  a  time  when  great  people 
may  lead  simple  hves,  and  when  a  family 
group  of  boys,  destined  if  possible  to  the 
intellectual  life — and  at  least  to  one  of  the 
learned  professions,  are  not  at  first  to  be  sent 
away  from  home.  They  live  under  the  par- 
ental roof,  and  their  Latin  tutor  lives  there 
with  them.  Latin  is  the  language  in  which, 
later  at  college  and  at  university,  lectures  on  all 
subjects  will  be  given;  it  will  be  the  language 
in  which  most  of  the  books  there  used  are 
printed;  the  language  of  recitation  and  of 
student  debate. 

So  these  small  boys  at  home  begin  Latin. 
They  also  so  begin  it  as  if  they  were  to  become 
interested  in  it,  and  really  to  learn  the  lan- 
guage, and  not  to  end  with  a  mere  smattering 


CAROLUS  LJNN^US  13 

of  it.  They  are  to  speak  it  as  well  as  read 
and  write  it.  Therefore  it  becomes  at  once, 
in  so  far  as  possible,  the  medium  of  spoken 
intercourse  between  tutor  and  pupils;  the 
father  of  the  family  himself  incidentally  aiding 
the  tutor,  by  addressing  the  youngsters  at 
meal  time  or  recreation  in  Latin,  and  requir- 
ing them  to  answer  in  that,  and  not  in  the 
mother  tongue.  It  was  a  serious  business: 
the  entrance  to  college,  the  matriculation  at 
any  university,  the  rising  to  any  learned  pro- 
fession even,  are  dependent  upon  the  boys 
having  made  good  progress  in  the  acquisition 
of  this,  at  that  time  the  universal  language  of 
the  educated.  The  Swede  or  Finlander  even, 
if  a  college  man,  might  visit  every  country 
of  Europe,  and  converse  with  the  men  of  the 
colleges  and  universities  everywhere,  without 
learning  one  of  the  modern  languages.  Lin- 
naeus even,  two  generations  this  side  of  the 
epoch  of  his  greatuncles,  the  Tilianders,  did 
this.  Now  among  this  aristocratic  caste  of  the 
learned,  in  mediaeval  times  and  later,  it  was 
almost  the  universal  custom  with  men  of  lowly 
origin  to  drop  the  ancestral  family  name  and 
assume  a  Latin  one.  It  was  the  fashion  of 
the  time;  and,  as  I  have  said,  the  time  lasted 
through   many   centuries.     When   Latin   was 


14  CAROLUS  LINNMUS 

the  language  of  a  certain  social  caste,  and  the 
language  of  almost  all  authorship,  the  canons 
of  good  taste  seemed  to  require  that  the 
author  of  a  book  in  Latin  should  put  his  name 
in  Latin  on  the  title  page,  and  not  in  some 
barbaric  Teutonian  or  Russian  or  Scandina- 
vian or  English  form  to  which,  as  to  a  plebian 
inheritance,  he  might  chance  to  have  been 
born.  Such  is  the  origin  of  the  general  cir- 
cumstance, familiar  to  all  botanists,  that  nearly 
all  the  thousands  of  volumes  of  botanical 
literature  that  antedate  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century  are  by  authors  whose 
names  are  plainly  Latin  names.  The  same  is 
true  of  the  earlier  literature  of  all  our  sciences. 
It  was  all  in  Latin;  and  the  authors'  names 
are  Latin  names. 

The  greatest  name  in  astronomy,  but  for 
the  man's  Latinization  of  it  on  the  title  page 
of  his  immortal  book,  would  have  come  down 
to  posterity  as  Kupernik.  But  all  astron- 
omers, and  all  other  people  besides,  should 
be  grateful  that,  the  book  being  in  Latin,  he 
wrote  himself  not  Kupernik  but  Copernicus. 
The  most  illustrious  of  old-time  Chinese  sages 
was  and  is  known  to  his  countrymen  as 
Kung-fu-tsee;  but  the  Latin  scholars  who, 
some  centuries  ago,  first  brought  him  to  the 


CAROLUS  LINNJEUS  15 

notice  of  the  western  world,  wisely  and  taste- 
fully Latinized  Kung-fu-tsee  to  Confucius. 
A  single  generation  earlier  than  Linnaeus 
there  flourished  in  Germany  one  of  the  great- 
est botanical  celebrities  which  that  country 
has  produced.  His  splendid  folios  are  now 
so  rare  that  only  the  choicest  botanical 
libraries  of  today  are  able  to  catalogue  a  set 
of  them;  and  they  were  very  helpful  to  the 
young  Linnaeus.  This  famous  German,  as  a 
boy,  and  before  his  college  days,  rejoiced  in 
the  plain  everyday  Teutonian  name  of  August 
Bachman.  Afterwards  as  professor  of  botany 
at  Leipzig,  and  the  author  of  immortal  books 
of  botany  in  Latin,  he  assumed  the  most 
perfect  counterfeit  of  an  ancient  classic  Latin 
personal  name  which  I  can  recall.  This 
August  Bachman  is  known  in  history  and  to 
fame  as  Augustus  Quirinus  Rivinus.  The 
name  Rivinus  was  arrived  at  in  the  simplest 
kind  of  a  way;  for  it  is  nothing  but  Bachman — 
the  man  who  dwells  by  a  rivulet  or  brook — 
translated  into  Latin.  Now  just  as  Rivinus 
— in  German  Bachman — recalls  a  stream- 
bank  where  the  Bachman  family  lived,  so 
those  forebears  of  Linnaeus  who,  on  rising  to 
the  rank  of  gentry,  took  the  Graeco-Latin 
name  Tihander,  chose  that  improved  appella- 


16  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

tion  in  allusion  to  an  object  in  the  landscape 
near  their  home.  That  object  was  a  remark- 
ably large  and  ancient  linden  tree;  a  tree  of 
special  note  all  over  that  part  of  the  country. 
Tiliander — Lind-tree-man ;  or  more  in  brief, 
Linnman.  In  Swedish  it  would  be  Lindman. 
So  these  two  learned  brothers  who  became 
the  head  of  the  Swedish  family  of  the  Tili- 
anders,  chose  a  botanical  name;  incidentally 
presaging  the  botanical  halo  that  was  to 
glorify  a  future  scion  of  their  stock  under  the 
same  name  somewhat  altered.  Now  if  the 
name  Tiliander  was  prophetic  incidentally 
it  had  not  been  chosen  accidentally. 

The  Reverend  Sven  Tiliander,  uncle  and 
foster-father  of  the  father  of  Linnaeus,  was  a 
devoted  lover  of  trees  and  plants.  It  was  that 
passion  for  botany  which  determined  his 
taking  the  new  and  classic-sounding  family 
name  from  the  great  linden  tree.  At  the  time 
of  his  taking  his  nephew  Nils  Ingemarsson  into 
his  family  to  make  of  him  if  possible  a  scholar 
and  a  Lutheran  priest,  he  had  extensive 
orchards  and  gardens,  to  the  care  and  improve- 
ment of  which  he  was  enthusiastically  devoted. 
This  enthusiasm  for  such  things  became 
contagious  in  the  case  of  his  nephew  Nils, 
insomuch  that  the  boy  found  delight  in  going 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  17 

with  his  uncle  and  helping  him  in  orchard 
and  garden.  Twenty  years  or  so  afterwards, 
this  nephew,  now  a  learned  graduate  and  assist- 
ant minister  of  a  parish,  as  the  Reverend  Nils 
Linnaeus — no  longer  Nils  Ingemarsson — had 
become  so  deeply  imbued  with  the  love  of  the 
beautiful  things  of  the  plant  world,  that  he 
began  the  establishment  of  orchard  and  gar- 
dens on  the  parish  farm  when  his  residence 
was  established.  A  word  here  as  to  his  new 
name  Linnaeus,  w^hich  had  now  displaced 
that  peasant's  name  Ingemarsson  to  which 
he  had  been  born.  Reared  and  educated 
along  with  his  first  cousins,  the  Tiliander 
boys,  it  may  be  assumed  the  whole  family 
may  have  thought  it  better  that,  as  scholar 
and  gentleman,  he  should  take  some  other 
name  than  Tiliander.  At  all  events,  and  quite 
as  if  in  grateful  love  of  his  uncle  and  cousins, 
he  took  a  name  precisely  the  equivalent  of 
theirs — the  name  of  Linnaeus.  It  is  not  quite 
as  elegant  in  its  construction  as  Tiliander,  but 
its  meaning  is  just  the  same.  It  is  another 
way  of  turning  Lindman  into  Latin.  And  so 
Nils  Ingemarsson,  by  changing  his  name  to 
Linnaeus,  paid  high  compliment  to  that  uncle 
and  benefactor,  Sven  Tiliander,  to  whom  he 
owed    so   very    much,    commemorated   again 

2 


18  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

that  ornament  of  the  northern  landscape,  the 
great  linden  tree,  and  supplied  to  all  scientific 
posterity  the  illustrious  and  immortal  name 
Linnaeus.  In  view  of  this,  that  the  most 
signal  and  lasting  service  that  the  great 
Linnaeus  rendered  botany  was  the  reform 
he  wrought  in  the  Latin  nomenclature  of 
plants,  the  derivation  of  his  own  name,  its 
botanical  origin  and  character,  can  not  fail  to 
be  of  interest  to  all  who,  on  this  his  two- 
hundredth  natal  day,  unite  in  celebrating  his 
imperishable  fame. 

The  Reverend  Nils  Linnaeus  was  no  sooner 
married  and  settled  in  the  charge  of  a  parish 
than  he  began  the  creation  of  an  orchard 
and  garden,  following  the  inspiration  he  had 
received  in  boyhood  while  under  the  benign 
influence  of  his  uncle,  the  Reverend  Sven 
Tiliander.  When  Nils  Linnaeus's  garden  had 
been  four  or  live  years  established,  the  pro- 
prietor began  to  lead  within  its  precincts  his 
first-born  child,  a  small  white-haired  boy, 
active  and  intelligent  beyond  the  average, 
for  his  years.  Flowers,  beyond  all  things 
else,  were  this  small  child's  delight.  Even  at 
the  age  of  four  years  he  knew  the  names  of 
all  the  familiar  kinds.  On  a  May  day  picnic 
excursion  that  the  pastor  gave  the  children 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  19 

of  the  parish,  to  a  wild  and  beautiful  spot 
some  few  miles  away,  this  botanical  nomen- 
clator  that  he  was  to  be,  nearly  monopolized 
the  pastor's  time  with  questions  of  plant 
names.  Many  kinds,  to  him  until  now  un- 
known, and  therefore  nameless,  he  must  have 
names  for.  Some  of  them  were  forgotten 
within  an  hour,  and  were  brought  again.  The 
father's  patience  gave  way  a  little,  and  the 
threat  was  made  that  unless  Master  Karl 
Linnaeus  was  more  careful  to  remember  them 
he  would  get  no  more  plant  names  at  all.  If 
the  Reverend  Nils  Linnaeus  had  thought  it 
time  to  begin  to  check  his  child's  extraordinary 
zeal  for  plant  knowledge,  this  was  the  WTong 
way  to  go  about  it.  That  threat,  though  a 
mild  one,  would  be  sure  to  have  the  opposite 
effect.  If  the  infant  had  inherited  the  father's 
temperament,  the  matter  would  have  been 
unimportant.  I  may  rather  say  that,  if  the 
child  Linnaeus  had  been  of  the  father's  tem- 
perament, this  restless  activity  and  burning 
zeal,  whether  for  plants  or  for  anything  else 
under  the  sun,  would  not  have  been  there, 
and  that  small  white-haired  Scandinavian 
child's  birthday  would  not  have  been  cele- 
brated on  two  or  three  continents,  after  two 
hundred  years. 


20  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

If  a  paradox  like  this  may  be  ventured,  one 
may  say  that  the  fatherhood  of  a  great  man 
must,  in  many  an  instance,  be  credited  to  the 
mother.  The  man  of  power  and  influence  may 
have  for  his  male  parent  one  of  quiet  retiring 
manner,  unaggressive,  unambitious,  and  even 
slow,  if  the  mother  be  very  decidedly  of  the 
opposite  temperament — active,  energetic,  am- 
bitious, ardent,  and  also  young,  strong  and 
in  perfect  health.  Just  these  conditions  pre- 
vailed at  the  nativity  of  Linnaeus.  The 
strong  character  in  that  household  was  the 
mother,  Christina  Broderson  Linnaeus.  It 
is  safe  to  infer  from  her  antecedents  that  she 
was  a  woman  of  refinement  and  perhaps 
unusual  mentality.  She  may  almost  be  said 
to  have  had  none  but  cultured  men  among 
her  ancestry  for  three  generations  back.  We 
have  already  seen  that  her  husband  was  her 
father's  successor  in  the  Stenbrohult  pastorate. 
Her  father  had  not  only  been  pastor  there  all 
his  official  life,  he  had  been  born  there,  as 
the  son  of  the  pastor  whom  he  in  turn  suc- 
ceeded; so  that  her  father  and  her  grandfather 
had  been  pastors  of  that  parish  all  their  lives 
— so  to  speak — while  the  priest  who  preceded 
her  paternal  grandfather  in  that  same  church 
had  been  her  great-grandfather  on  her  mother's 


CAROLUS  LINNJEUS  21 

side.  Realizing  now  that,  when  in  the  nine- 
teenth year  of  her  own  age,  Christina  Lin- 
nseus's  first-born  arrived  at  the  parsonage 
w^here  both  she  and  her  father  before  her 
had  been  born,  where  a  grandfather  of  hers 
and  even  a  great-grandfather  had  held  life- 
long pastorates,  we  pardon  the  ambition  of  the 
young  mother  who  set  her  whole  heart  and 
soul  upon  the  plan  of  having  this  her  first-born 
trained  and  fitted  to  inherit  that  pastorate 
already  historically  so  remarkable;  of  which 
history  she  could  not  but  be  proud. 


SCHOOL,  COLLEGE  AND  UNIVERSITY  YEARS 

The  mental  training  of  the  child  Linnseus 
was,  of  course,  begun  at  home.  At  seven 
years  of  age  he  was  well  enough  advanced 
to  have  a  tutor.  At  ten  he  was  sent  away  to 
a  Latin  school  and  theological  preparatory 
at  Wexio,  not  many  miles  from  home.  After 
eight  years  there,  the  progress  made  in  studies 
looking  to  the  office  of  a  Lutheran  ecclesiastic 
seems  not  to  have  been  satisfactory;  and  now 
the  Reverend  Nils  Linnaeus  came  journe^dng 
to  Wexio.  The  instructors  whose  duty  it 
had  been  to  train  the  boy  in   Hebrew  and 


22  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

biblical  learning  had  failed  to  interest  him; 
and  they  said  to  the  father  that  they  could 
not,  on  their  consciences,  advise  him  to 
continue  the  youth  at  school.  In  their  view 
it  would  be  better  at  once  to  apprentice  him 
to  the  learning  of  some  handicraft;  that  of 
carpenter  or  tailor,  for  example.  Doubtless 
this  counsel  would  have  been  followed,  but 
that  Pastor  Linnaeus  had  another  errand  at 
Wexio  that  must  be  attended  to  before  the 
disheartened  return  to  Stenbrohult,  whither, 
as  it  now  seemed,  he  would  have  to  convey 
his  son,  now  eighteen  years  old,  as  withdrawn 
from  college  because  of  his  having  no  taste 
for  learning;  that  is,  theological. 

Pastor  Linnseus's  other  errand  was  that  of 
placing  himself  under  the  direction  of  an 
eminent  physician  of  Wexio  as  to  an  ailment 
of  his.  The  physician  was  Dr.  Rothman,  who 
was  also  a  lecturer  on  medicine  at  the  college; 
and  this  man,  as  it  happened,  both  knew  and 
was  much  interested  in  the  youthful  member 
of  the  Linnaeus  family.  When  the  father  con- 
fidingly mentioned  his  deep  grief  over  his 
son's  failure  at  school.  Dr.  Rothman  was  able 
to  cheer  him  with  a  very  different  account  of 
his  boy's  proficiency.  He  was  so  confident 
that  out  of  this  bright  youth  a  great  physi- 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  23 

cian  might  be  made,  that  he  proposed  to 
receive  him,  with  the  father's  consent,  into 
his  own  house  for  a  year,  and  give  him  special 
instruction,  free  of  all  charge;  and  this  was 
done. 

Now  while  making  himself  the  despair  of 
his  tutors  in  Hebrew  and  theology,  what  had 
the  young  Linnaeus  been  accomplishing  all 
these  years?  The  idler  which  these  thought 
him,  he  had  not  been.  In  mathematics  and 
physics  he  was  quite  distinguished;  moreover, 
his  student  comrades  called  him  always  the 
little  botanist,  thus  by  chance  conveying  the 
information  that,  as  a  youth  of  eighteen  years, 
Linnaeus  was  small  of  stature,  and  as  much 
as  possible  given  to  botanizing.  He  has  told 
us  himself  that,  during  all  his  years  at  Wexio, 
the  red-letter  days  were  those  of  his  occasional 
walks  across  the  country  thirty  miles  to  the 
home  at  Stenbrohult,  which  gave  opportunity 
to  study  the  wild  plants  of  the  waysides. 
He  had  also  acquired  certain  books  on  botany 
— Swedish  local  floras — in  the  study  of  which 
he  had  busied  himself  day  and  night  until 
he  almost  knew  them  by  heart,  as  he  assures 
us.  The  titles  of  at  least  three  of  those  books, 
and  especially  their  authors'  names,  must 
needs  be  given  on  a  Linnsean  bicentenary  that 


24  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

is  celebrated  in  America.  The  fitness  of  this 
mention  you  shall  see.  One  of  the  books 
was  Rudbeck's  Hortus  Upsaliensis  (1658); 
another  was  TiWsirAsiuQ^s  Flora  Ahoensis  (1673) ; 
the  third  Bromelius's  Chloris  Gothica  (1694). 
It  was  to  the  grateful  memory  of  these  Scan- 
dinavian botanists,  Rudbeckius,  Tillandsius 
and  Bromelius,  all  of  them  dead  before  Lin- 
naeus was  born,  that  he,  in  the  days  of  his 
own  fame,  consecrated  those  fine  American 
genera,  Rudbeckia,  Tillandsia  and  Bromelia. 
These  men,  by  their  books,  had  been  his 
teachers  of  botany  while  he  dwelt  at  Wexio 
between  the  eleventh  year  of  his  age  and  the 
nineteenth.  It  is  true  that  the  works  of  these 
men  were  not  of  the  nature  of  what  would 
now  be  called  scientific  botany;  that  is,  the 
plants  discussed  were  not  arranged  according 
to  any  notion  of  their  affinities.  The  order 
followed  was  either  that  of  the  alphabetic 
order  of  their  names,  as  in  a  common  dic- 
tionary, or  else,  if  they  were  grouped  at  all, 
the  grouping  was  according  to  their  medicinal 
properties  or  other  economic  uses.  All  these 
books,  so  much  beloved  and  revered  by 
the  youthful  Linnaeus,  had  been  published 
before  Tournefort,  who,  practically,  and  at 
least  for  the  time  immediately  antecedent  to 


CAROLUS  LINNAEUS  25 

Linnaeus,  was  the  father  of  natural  system  in 
botany. 

It  was  as  an  inmate  of  Dr.  Rothman's 
household,  and  while  preparing  under  his 
direction  to  enter  some  university  as  a  candi- 
date for  the  doctorate  in  medicine,  that  a  new 
day  dawned  upon  Linnaeus' s  horizon  in  respect 
to  his  botanical  recreations  and  pursuits. ,  The 
botanical  system  of  Tournefort  had  now  been 
before  the  public  for  some  thirty  years.  His 
work  was  the  most  complete  and  signal  success 
that  ever  had  been,  and  I  may  almost  say 
that  ever  yet  has  been,  in  the  field  of  botanical 
authorship;  because  it  seems  to  have  capti- 
vated the  whole  botanical  world,  without 
arousing  a  jealous  enemy,  or  eliciting  a  line 
of  adverse  criticism  for  twenty  years,  save 
only  a  mild  protest  from  the  gentle  John  Ray, 
in  England,  who,  clearly  superior  to  Tourne- 
fort as  a  botanist,  never  measured  half  the 
latter's  success  as  an  immediate  and  popular 
influence.  Viewed  without  bias  of  prejudice, 
and  in  the  perspective  of  two  centuries, 
Tournefort's  Institutes  becomes  the  most 
conspicuous  landmark  in  the  whole  history 
of  botany.  By  no  other  one  author's  help 
did  the  science  make  a  stride  in  advance  equal 
to    that   made   under    Tournefort's   influence 


D.  R  HILL  UBRAJ^ 

North  CarnlinA  ^aK»  C^i 


26  CAROLUS  LINN.EUS 

between  the  years  1694  and  1730.  It  is 
important  that  these  things  be  taken  note  of 
here.  On  the  day  when  Linnaeus  was  born, 
two  hundred  years  ago,  Tournefort's  dazzUng 
star  was  high  on  the  botanical  horizon.  It 
was  at  its  meridian  when,  at  eighteen  years 
of  age,  Linnaeus  fell  under  the  benign  influence 
of  Dr.  Rothman  at  Wexio.  This  man  made 
no  pretensions  to  botany,  beyond  what  any 
first-class  practising  physician  of  that  period 
had  to  know;  but  he  had  full  knowledge  of  the 
great  fame  of  the  Parisian,  Tournefort,  and 
had  in  his  library  the  German  Professor 
Valentini's^  abridgement  of  Tournefort's  Ele- 
ments. Dr.  Rothman  had  evidently  studied 
Tournefort  and  been  fascinated  with  his 
system.  Linnaeus  the  youth,  away  in  the 
distant  north,  the  pupil  of  none  but  theolo- 
gians, had  not  so  much  as  heard  of  Tournefort. 
Rothman  told  him  frankly  that  all  his  recrea- 
tions with  plants  were  little  better  than  wasted 
time  unless  he  should  begin  to  recognize  them 
as  interrelated  by  characters  of  their  flowers, 
as  Tournefort  had  taught. 

From  the  day  when  Dr.  Rothman  placed 

^  Valentini  (Michael  Bernhard) ,  professor  of  Giessen. 
Tournefortius  Contractus,  Frankfurt  am  Main.  1715,  folio, 
48  p.,  4  tab. 


CAROLUS  LINN^'US  27 

in  his  hands  Valentini's  key  to  the  twenty- 
two  Tournefortian  classes  of  plants,  the  young 
Linnaeus  bent  his  energies  in  botany  to  ascer- 
taining by  their  organographic  marks  to 
what  one  of  the  classes  of  Tournefort  each 
plant  that  he  found  belonged.  It  was  a 
day  that  completely  and  most  happily  revo- 
lutionized this  brilliant  youth's  conception 
of  the  plant  world,  as  well  as  his  method  of 
investigating  it.  It  was  in  fact  the  day  when 
Linnaeus,  according  to  his  own  testimony 
about  it,  first  began  to  be  a  botanist;  and 
thence-forward  the  illustrious  Parisian  had 
never  a  more  zealous  disciple,  until  after  some 
years  the  ardent  disciple  began,  and  in  some 
respects  deservingly,  to  supersede  the  master. 
It  is  hardly  to  the  praise  of  Linnaeus  that  in 
after  life,  when  at  the  height  of  his  own  re- 
splendent fame  he  was  dedicating  a  genus 
of  plants  to  each  of  his  chief  benefactors  of 
earlier  days,  he  forgot  good  Dr.  Rothman. 
This  man  had  been  the  first,  and  perhaps  the 
most  important  of  them  all,  even  from  the 
viewpoint  of  botanical  training.  It  was  cer- 
tainly he  who,  as  far  as  one  can  see,  saved 
the  boy  Linnaeus  from  oblivion  when  his 
own  father  had  resolved  to  apprentice  him  to 
a  cabinet-maker  or  tailor.     It   was   he  who. 


28  CAROLUS  LINNAEUS 

having  assumed  as  it  were  sponsorship  for 
Linnaeus  as  candidate  for  a  career  in  science, 
placed  in  his  hands  the  first  book  of  real 
botany  that  the  youth  had  ever  seen,  and 
taught  him  how  to  begin  to  be  a  botanist;  intro- 
duced him  to  the  illustrious  Tournefort,  who 
at  once  became  the  lodestar  of  Linnseus's 
own  genius  for  years  to  come.  Yet  to  the 
end  of  Linnseus's  days  there  was  no  genus 
Rothmania.  Professor  Thunberg,  once  a  pupil 
of  Linnaeus  at  Upsala,  and  long  afterwards 
a  successor  of  his  in  the  chair  of  botany  there, 
made  tardy  reparation  to  the  neglected  mem- 
ory of  Dr.  Rothman,  after  both  benefactor 
and  beneficiary  were  dead. 

After  one  year  under  Dr.  Rothman's  patron- 
age and  instruction  it  was  thought  advisable 
that  Linnaeus  should  enter  the  university  at 
Lund.  In  connection  with  the  transfer  from 
Wexio  to  Lund  there  was  an  illustration  of 
how,  in  the  extremities  of  their  need,  fortune 
favors  at  every  turn  the  men  of  genius  and  of 
high  destiny.  It  was  requisite  that  the  candi- 
date should  carry  a  formal  letter  of  transfer 
from  the  head  master  of  Wexio  Academy  to 
the  rector  of  the  University  at  Lund.  The 
head  of  the  Wexio  school,  a  professor  of  divin- 
ity, must  have  been  the  self -same  who,  one 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  29 

year  before,  had  counselled  Nils  Linnseus  to 
abandon  all  hope  of  Karl's  ever  becoming  a 
clergyman,  to  take  him  home  and  apprentice 
him  to  the  learning  of  some  useful  handi- 
craft. To  this  man  young  Linnaeus  had  to 
make  application  for  the  necessary  credentials. 
As  a  matter  of  routine  duty,  the  letter  was 
indited  promptly  and  handed  to  the  appli- 
cant. It  was  brief  and  rhetorical;  and, 
whether  by  chance  or  of  deliberate  purpose, 
the  figure  of  speech  employed  was  botanical. 
^'Boys  at  school,"  he  writes,  "may  be  likened  >  ^ 
to  young  trees  in  orchard  nurseries;  where 
it  will  sometimes  happen  that  here  and  there 
among  the  sapling  trees  are  such  as  make 
little  growth,  or  even  appear  like  wild  seed- 
lings, giving  no  promise;  but  which  when 
afterw^ards  transplanted  to  the  orchard,  make 
a  start,  branch  out  freely,  and  at  last  yield 
satisfactory   fruit." 

On  reaching  Lund,  Linnseus  first  of  all 
paid  his  respects  to  Professor  Gabriel  Hoek, 
who  some  years  before  had  been  an  esteemed 
tutor  of  his  in  the  earlier  days  at  Wexio. 
This  gentleman  was  so  much  pleased  at  see- 
ing young  Linnseus  there  as  a  postulant  for 
admission  to  the  university,  that  he  at  once, 
and  in  complete  ignorance  of  that  humiliating 


30  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

letter,  proposed  to  himself  the  pleasure  of 
introducing  in  person  his  former  pupil  to  the 
rector  Magnificus  and  also  to  the  dean,  and 
asking  that  he  be  registered  as  his  own  former 
pupil.  This  done,  good  Professor  Gabriel 
Hoek,  like  a  veritable  angel  guardian  and 
helper,  and  knowing  the  indigence  of  Linnaeus, 
went  farther  and  procured  for  him  free  lodgings 
under  the  hospitable  roof  of  one  Doctor  Kilian 
Stobseus. 

Doctor  Stobseus,  at  the  time  only  a  prac- 
tising physician  to  the  nobility  and  gentry 
at  Lund  and  the  regions  round  about — though 
afterwards  one  of  the  head  professors  at  the 
university — at  first  saw  in  young  Linnaeus 
but  an  indigent  student  with  the  profession 
of  medicine  in  view,  his  only  possessions 
seeming  to  be  a  few  books  of  medicine.  But 
the  student,  on  the  other  hand,  found  the 
Stobseus  domicile  a  wonderful  and  fascinating 
place.  There  was  a  library,  evidently  precious 
because  it  was  kept  locked.  There  were, 
however,  open  to  any  one's  inspection,  a 
number  of  cabinets  of  natural  history;  col- 
lections of  minerals,  shells,  birds,  and — what 
Linnaeus,  though  he  was  now  twenty  years 
old,  had  never  before  seen — an  herbarium; 
a   collection   of  pressed   and   dried   botanical 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  31 

specimens.  On  this  suggestion  Linnaeus  at 
once  began  making  an  herbarium  of  his  own; 
its  contents  being  the  plants  of  Lund  and  its 
vicinity.  But  what  he  wished,  far  beyond 
anything  else,,  was  access  to  the  library,  though 
he  did  not  dare  ask  for  the  privilege.  There 
he  would  be  sure  to  find  the  works  of  Tourne- 
fort,  original  and  unabridged,  and  even  older 
and  rarer  standards  of  the  best  botany.  The 
privilege  came  at  last,  and  in  a  remarkable 
manner;  by  a  chain  of  circumstances  that 
demonstrates  the  young  Linnseus's  irrepres- 
sible zeal  and  most  unexampled  industry  in 
acquiring  knowledge  of  botany. 

Doctor  Stobseus,  the  owner  of  the  first 
museum  of  natural  historv  that  Linnaeus  had 
beheld,  was,  by  Linnaeus's  account  of  him, 
not  only  of  great  learning  and  of  surpassing 
skill  in  the  healing  art,  but  also  himself  a 
feeble  sickly  man,  having  but  one  eye,  being 
also  crippled  in  one  foot,  and  a  gloom}^  hypo- 
chondriac. A  student  or  two  in  his  household 
was  a  necessity.  Much  of  his  medical  practice 
was  by  correspondence,  and  on  some  of  the 
professional  visits  the  student  must  be  sent. 
At  the  time  of  Linnseus's  coming^  a  medicaP 
student  from  Germany  had  long  been  Dr. 
Stobaeus's    main    dependence    for    help;    was 


32  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

thoroughly  trusted,  and  his  right-hand  man. 
This  older  student  the  magnetic  young  Linnaeus 
in  an  innocent  way,  and  half  unconsciously, 
appears  to  have  at  first  captivated  and  then 
bribed  into  helping  him  in  respect  to  that 
which  he  now  most  desired. 

An  old  and  honored  inmate  of  the  doctor's 
household  was  his  mother.  She  was  a  nervous, 
fretful  old  lady,  much  troubled  with  sleep- 
lessness. A  window  of  young  Linnseus's  room 
was  visible  from  where  she  tried  to  sleep,  and 
she  observed  that,  after  this  new-comer  had 
been  in  the  house  some  weeks,  a  light  seemed 
to  be  left  burning  in  his  room,  if  not  all  night, 
at  least  until  well  towards  morning,  w^hen 
presumably  it  had  burnt  itself  out.  She 
reported  the  case  to  her  son,  and  insistently,  as 
a  thing  that  ought  by  all  means  to  be  stopped. 
The  whole  house  was  in  danger  of  destruction 
by  fire.  Dr.  Stobseus  had  knowledge  of 
students  and  their  ways.  In  his  own  mind 
he  doubted  that  this  was  a  case  of  sleeping 
with  the  candles  burning.  He  entertained 
a  suspicion  that  the  two  companion  youths 
would  be  found  there,  recreating  themselves 
with  cards  in  the  small  hours  of  the  night. 
At  two  o'clock  next  morning,  the  room  of 
young  Linnaeus  being  illuminated,  the  doctor 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  33 

quietly  made  his  way  to  the  door,  opened  it 
and  went  in.  The  young  man  was  found  alone 
at  his  study  table,  which  was  covered  with 
open  books.  A  step  nearer  the  table  disclosed 
the  interesting  and  not  readily  accountable 
fact  that  all  were  books  on  botany,  and  out  of 
Stobseus's  own  library  that  was  always  kept 
securely  locked.  To  the  question  how  he 
obtained  those  books  from  the  locked  library 
Linnaeus  answered  in  brief,  and  very  frankly, 
that  the  other  student  had  desired  of  him  a 
course  of  instruction  in  physics;  that  he  had 
begun  the  course,  and  was  continuing  it, 
upon  the  stipulated  condition  that  he,  who 
had  free  access  to  the  library,  should  nightly 
bring  him  books  of  botany,  which  he  himself 
would  study  late  at  night,  so  that  they  might 
be  returned  to  the  library  shelves  in  the  early 
morning  before  the  household  should  be  astir. 
Dr.  Stobseus,  suppressing  the  pleasure  and 
approbation  that  were  mingled  with  his  amaze- 
ment, said:  ''Go  to  bed,  and  hereafter  sleep 
while  other  people  are  asleep."  The  next 
morning  he  sent  for  Linnaeus  to  come  to  his 
study;  asked  him  to  rehearse  again  the  story 
of  how  he  obtained  those  books;  then  gave 
him  a  dupHcate  key  to  the  library,  together 
with  permission  to  use  it  as  freely  as  if  it 
3 


34  CAROLUS  LINN.EUS 

were  his  own.  Moreover,  as  he  had  hitherto 
nothing  but  his  lodging  with  Stobseus,  he 
was  now  invited  to  take  his  meals  at  his  table ; 
was  often  sent  to  visit  patients,  and  in  every 

.way  treated  with  affectionate  regard. 

When  nearing  the  end  of  his  year  at  Lund, 
Linnaeus  fell  dangerously  ill.  At  the  beginning 
of  a  slow  convalescence  they  sent  him  to  the 
parental  home,  the  parsonage  at  Stenbrohult. 
Here  his  admiring  first  patron.  Dr.  Rothman 
of  Wexio,  visited  him.     He  was  now  ambitious 

.  that  his  former  pupil,  instead  of  returning 
to  Lund,  should  enter  the  great  university 
at  Upsala,  where  men  of  renown  occupied 
professional  chairs,  Roberg  in  medicine,  and 
Rudbeck  the  younger  in  botany.  The  parents, 
in  view  of  the  quite  marvellous  successes  of 
their  boy  during  the  two  years  that  they 
had  left  him  without  financial  aid,  seem  to 
have  relented,  and  partly  forgiven  his  having 
disappointed  their  wishes  as  to  a  vocation; 
and  he  was  given  some  money  with  which 
to  procure  conveyance  to  Upsala  and  make 
the  beginnings  of  a  career  at  that  celebrated 
seat  of  learning;  this,  however,  with  the 
stern  assurance  that  this  was  all  they  would 
be  able  to  do;  that  no  remittances  from  home 
would  be  forthcoming.     Before  the  first  year 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  35 

at  Upsala  was  completed  Linnaeus  was  penni- 
less and  almost  barefooted;  being  obliged  to 
line  his  shoes  with  birch  bark  and  pasteboard, 
and  his  clothing  was  worse  than  threadbare. 
He  was  now  in  the  twenty-third  year  of  his 
age,  and  in  his  distress  he  still  consoled  himself 
with  studies  botanical.  In  the  midst  of  the 
botanic  garden  at  Upsala  he  sat,  one  autumn 
day,  drawing  up  descriptions  of  some  rare 
plants  that  were  in  bloom.  An  ecclesiastic 
of  distinguished  bearing  in  passing  through 
the  garden  paused  before  him,  asked  him 
what  he  was  describing,  if  he  knew  plants, 
was  a  student  of  botany,  from  what  part  of 
the  country  he  had  come,  and  how  long  he 
had  been  at  the  university,  tested  his  knowl- 
edge of  botany  by  asking  him  the  name  of 
all  the  plants  that  were  in  sight.  This  ecclesi- 
astic was  no  less  noted  a  personage  than  Olaus 
Celsius,  a  man  then  some  sixty  years  of  age, 
eminent  as  a  theologian,  an  orientalist  and 
more  than  an  amateur  in  the  natural  sciences; 
even  now  beginning  to  be  a  botanist;  for 
some  two  years  before  the  date  of  his  chance 
meeting  with  the  student  Linnaeus  he  had 
been  assigned  by  a  council  of  Lutheran  cler- 
gymen the  task  of  writing  a  treatise  on  the 
plants  mentioned  in  the  Bible.     His  classic 


36  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

Hierobotanon  was  the  result  of  his  attempt  to 
fulfil  that  commission,  and,  by  the  way,  none 
will  ever  know  how  largely  he  may  have  been 
indebted  to  the  young  student  Linnaeus  in 
the  preparation  of  that  work.  The  examina- 
tion that  he  had  given  the  youth,  there  in  the 
botanic  garden,  had  filled  him  with  wondering 
admiration.  Celsius  saw  that  he  needed  him; 
saw  also  in  his  worn  clothing  and  almost 
bare  feet  the  evidence  of  a  worthy  student's 
grinding  poverty.  Within  a  few  days  Linnaeus 
was  comfortably  housed  with  Professor  Celsius; 
having  been  commanded  to  bring  with  him  that 
herbarium  of  600  Swedish  plants  which  he  said 
had  accumulated  with  the  last  three  years. 

Celsius  was  to  write  a  botany  of  Palestine 
by  and  by,  and  was  now  devoting  as  much 
time  as  he  might  to  the  botany  that  was  at 
hand,  that  of  his  own  country;  and  he  had 
augmented  his  great  scholar's  library  by  the 
acquisition  of  all  the  standard  and  many 
rare  books  of  botany.  Linnaeus  was  again 
in  the  enjoyment  of  great  good  fortune.  Yet 
all  this  was  not  for  long.  Celsius's  very  zeal 
and  benevolence  on  his  behalf  brought  the 
young  man  into  trouble.  By  his  great  influ- 
ence he  procured  for  Linnaeus  an  examination, 
which  was  followed  by  a  license  to  lecture 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  37 

publicly  in  the  botanic  garden.  The  candi- 
date had  not  been  three  years  in  residence,  and 
Professor  Roberg  expressed  it  as  his  opinion 
that  the  precedent  was  a  dangerous  one  to 
have  established.  The  lectures  were  begun, 
and  Linnaeus  had  a  throng  of  students  of  the 
best  class,  among  sons  of  some  of  the  uni- 
versity professors;  and  he  was  now  able  to 
clothe  himself  comfortably.  This  all  happened 
at  a  time  when  a  promising  instructor,  Nils 
Rosen,  had  lately  gone  abroad  on  a  two  years^ 
leave  to  obtain  the  doctorate  in  medicine. 
A  less  competent  young  man  had  been  dele- 
gated to  take  Rosen's  work  during  his  absence. 
Linnaeus,  by  his  superior  learning  and  per- 
sonal magnetism,  appears  quite  innocently 
to  have  drawn  away  his  students.  There 
would  be  trouble  in  store  for  Linnaeus 
whensoever  Rosen  should  return.  It  is  a 
sad  truth  that,  in  science  as  elsewhere  in 
this  world,  the  mediocre  man  in  higher 
position  must  hate  and  if  possible  persecute 
the  superior  man  in  lower  station,  and  that 
for  his  very  superiority,  if  for  nothing  else. 
Rosen,  on  his  return  from  abroad,  with  the 
doctor's  degree  won,  besought  of  old  Pro- 
fessor Rudbeck  permission  to  teach  botany 
himself,  hoping  thereby  to  draw  from  docent 


38  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

Linnaeus  all  his  students.  Rudbeck  declined 
to  consider  such  a  proposition,  stating  frankly 
that  Dr.  Rosen  was  hardly  very  well  pre- 
pared to  instruct  in  botany.  Rosen's  next 
move  was  successful.  He  procured  the  passage 
of  an  official  regulation  to  the  effect  that  no 
undergraduate  should  be  permitted  to  lecture 
publicly,  to  the  prejudice  of  a  regularly 
appointed  instructor.  Such  an  instructor 
there  was  in  the  person  of  the  young  man 
who  had  been  appointed  to  teach  in  Rosen's 
place  while  he  was  absent.  Thus  was  Linnaeus 
deprived  of  the  means  of  living  any  longer 
at  Upsala. 

JOURNEY    TO    LAPLAND 

Inasmuch  as  his  lecturing  in  the  botanic 
garden  had  been  under  Rudbeck's  juris- 
diction, and  the  latter  had  become  much 
attached  to  the  young  man,  he  had  taken 
him  into  his  own  household.  Rudbeck  him- 
self had  been  the  earliest  botanical  explorer 
of  Lapland,  and,  by  frequent  rehearsal  of  the 
wonders  he  had  seen  in  that  wild  hyperborean 
realm,  he  had  enkindled  in  the  young  Linnaeus 
a  keen  desire  to  go  there.  The  Swedish 
government  had  long  thought  its  own  terri- 


Carolus  Linnaeus  as  he  appeared  when  starting  upon  his 
journey  to  Lapland  in  May.  1732 


CAROLUS  LINNJSUS  39 

torial  possessions  there  to  be  worth  investi- 
gating from  scientific  and  economic  points 
of  view. 

It  was  now  soon  arranged  that  Linnaeus, 
under  the  auspices  of  the  Academy  of  Sciences 
at  Upsala,  should  make  an  expedition  to 
Lapland  for  purposes  of  scientific  exploration. 
He  set  forth  from  Upsala  on  the  thirteenth 
of  May,  1732,  returning  late  in  autumn.  It 
had  been  a  journey  of  some  2500  miles,  made 
alone,  for  the  most  part,  and  almost  every- 
where on  foot;  but  this  was  one  of  the  most 
fruitful  seasons  of  his  whole  life,  though  he 
was  now  but  twenty-five  years  of  age.  His 
Flora  Lapponica,  together  with  the  narrative 
of  the  journey,  are  among  the  most  instructive 
and  fascinating  reports  of  a  scientific  expedi- 
tion ever  written.  In  the  day  when  they  were 
new  they  were  unequalled  in  the  literature  of 
scientific  travel;  and  the  Flora  Lapponica 
would  have  secured  a  deathless  fame  to 
any  botanist,  even  if  he  had  written  nothing 
else. 

JOURNEY  TO  GERMANY  AND  HOLLAND 

After  the  return  from  Lapland  the  next 
two  years  were  passed  in  teaching  publicly 


40  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

and  privately,  at  one  place  and  another  in 
Sweden,  mostly  at  Fahlun;  but  also  at  every 
spare  hour  of  time  working  industriously  at 
the  manuscripts  of  several  books — the  Flora 
Lapponica  and  others — which  he  was  all  the 
while  hoping  soon  to  be  able  to  give  to  the 
public.  At  Fahlun  he  won  the  esteem  and 
friendship  of  the  Rev.  Johan  Browallius,  at 
that  time  private  chaplain  to  a  certain  noble- 
man, subsequently  a  professor  at  the  Uni- 
versity of  Abo,  and  Lutheran  bishop  of  that 
diocese.  This  man  urged  Linnaeus  to  circum- 
vent his  powerful  antagonist  at  Upsala  by 
going  abroad  and  taking  his  degree  in  medi- 
cine at  some  foreign  university.  Following 
this  counsel,  Linnaeus,  in  the  beginning  of  the 
year  1735,  sailed  for  Germany  and  the  Nether- 
lands, taking  with  him  a  finished  medical 
thesis  for  presentation  at  some  school  of 
medicine,  and  also  the  manuscripts  of  several 
books  of  botany.  Before  the  end  of  June 
he  had  passed  the  examinations,  successfully 
defended  his  thesis,  and  obtained  the  degree 
of  Doctor  of  Medicine;  this  at  Hardewyk  in 
Holland. 

The  primary  object  of  his  trip  abroad  having 
been  attained,  there  were  reasons  w^hy  he 
might  have  been  expected  to  take  advantage 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  41 

of  the  first  opportunity  that  should  present 
itself  for  his  return  to  Sweden.  Before  leaving 
his  native  land  Linnaeus  had  acquired  what 
is  said  to  be  easily  gained  by  even  a  poor 
young  man  when  he  happens  to  be  of  good 
presence,  polite  accomplishments  and  some 
personal  magnetism;  he  had  provided  himself 
with  a  rich  and  elderly  prospective  father-in- 
law.  Said  prospective  father-in-law  had  re- 
turned the  compliment  by  providing  Linnaeus 
with  some  travelling  funds  and  the  needful 
university  fees.  Before  bidding  the  pros- 
pective son-in-law  farewell  Dr.  Morseus,  as 
if  endowed  with  some  of  that  wisdom  that 
men  say  comes  with  years,  and  as  if  doubting 
that  the  prospective  bride  would  surely  speed 
the  young  man's  early  return,  enjoined  it 
upon  him  that  he  must  come  back  and  begin 
the  practice  of  medicine  whensoever  he  should 
have  gained  the  doctorate. 

But  that  which  had  long  been  uppermost 
in  Linnseus's  mind  had  been,  not  medicine, 
but  systematic  botany.  In  the  direction  of 
the  latter  all  his  ambition  led  him.  The 
manuscripts  of  what  he  hoped  would  be 
immortal  books  of  botany — and  they  became 
such — he  had  brought  with  him.  No  one 
in  Sweden  would  have  published  them.     In 


42  CAROLUS  LINNJEUS 

Germany,  in  Holland  and  in  France  there 
were  many  and  splendid  botanical  establish- 
ments and  several  learned  botanical  pro- 
fessors of  world-wide  fame.  His  books  if 
published  must  have  the  approval  of  these 
in  order  to  insure  for  them  success.  He  must 
see  these  men,  ingratiate  himself  with  them 
personally,  show  them  his  manuscripts,  dis- 
cuss with  them  the  merits  of  his  system;  for 
it  was  new,  and  in  its  leading  characteristics 
altogether  revolutionary.  His  money  was  now 
almost  all  gone,  but  what  of  that?  He  had 
often  been  in  such  straits  before,  but  some 
provision  had  always  hitherto  been  made  for 
him. 

Leyden  was  the  seat  of  what,  at  the  time, 
w^as  the  most  celebrated  university  in  Holland ; 
and,  for  botanical  gardens,  and  botanical 
celebrities  who  had  taught  there,  was  hardly 
second  to  Paris  itself  with  its  traditions  of 
Tournefort  and  his  successor,  Vaillant.  In 
Professor  Paul  Hermann's  time,  little  more 
than  a  generation  anterior  to  Linnaeus,  the 
Leyden  Garden  had  been  confessedly  the 
finest  and  richest  in  the  world.  After  Paul 
Hermann,  Dr.  Hermann  Boerhaave  had  pre- 
sided there.  He  had  retired  from  the  pro- 
fessorship three  years  before  Linnaeus' s  arrival 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  43 

in  Holland,  and  was  now  at  once  the  most 
famous  physician  in  Europe  and  without  a 
rival  as  an  authority  upon  systematic  botany. 
He  was  living  in  age  and  retirement  not  far 
from  Leyden,  and  there  was  not  another  man 
upon  the  face  of  the  earth  whom  Linnaeus 
so  much  wished  to  see.  He  could  not  endure 
the  thought  of  returning  to  Sweden  without 
having  visited  this  great  Mecca  of  botanists, 
Leyden.  Once  there,  he  found  friends  in 
learned  botanists  nearer  his  own  age  who 
had  not  yet  published  books,  and  of  whom 
he  had  not  heard.  Among  these,  Adrian  van 
Royen,  professor  at  the  University  in  succes- 
sion to  the  illustrious  Boerhaave;  also  Dr. 
Gronovius,  a  well-versed  and  ardent  botanist. 
Others  at  Leyden  who  became  Linnseus's 
cordial  and  helpful  friends  we  must  not  stop 
to  name.  Both  van  Royen  and  Gronovius 
became  enthusiastic  over  the  young  man  and 
his  manuscripts.  Gronovius  was  so  charmed 
with  his  Systema  Naturae  that  he  proposed, 
with  Linnaeus's  permission,  to  have  it  pub- 
lished at  once,  and  the  printing  of  it  was 
begun.  It  came  out,  as  a  mere  outline  sketch 
of  a  new  natural  history.  It  was  a  folio 
tract  of  but  fourteen  pages,  but  it  was  every- 
where  received   with   the   greatest   applause. 


44  CAROLUS  LINN.^US 

Meanwhile,  Linnaeus  had  used  every  endeavor 
to  see  that  great  oracle  of  medicine  and  of 
botany,  old  Boerhaave,  but  in  vain.  Pro- 
vided with  a  letter  from  Gronovius,  he  had 
called  every  day  for  a  whole  week,  but  to  no 
purpose.  Ambassadors  and  princes  had  found 
him  accessible  with  some  difficulty.  Even 
Peter  the  Great  of  Russia  had  been  obliged 
to  wait  two  hours  in  an  ante-room,  to  take 
his  turn  in  getting  a  conference  with  this 
busiest  and  most  imperious  old  prince  of 
learning  and  master  of  the  healing  art.  Lin- 
naeus now  bethought  himself  to  send  a  copy 
of  the  new  Systema  Naturae.  A  letter  came 
back,  naming  the  day  and  the  hour  when 
he  should  be  admitted  to  an  audience.  The 
interview  was  prolonged  and  was  carried  into 
Boerhaave's  own  private  botanic  garden,  a 
place  well  stocked  with  almost  all  plants 
and  trees  that  had  been  found  to  endure  the 
climate  of  Leyden.  One  beautiful  tree  which 
Boerhaave  thought — was  even  very  certain — 
had  never  been  described,  Linnaeus  gave  him 
the  name  for,  also  the  volume  and  page  of 
one  of  Vaillant's  folios  in  which  it  was  de- 
scribed fully  and  clearly.  When  they  returned 
to  the  library  the  place  was  found  and  the 
truth   was   admitted.     The   venerable   doctor 


CAROLUS  LINN^US      '  45 

advised  the  young  Swede  to  settle  in  Holland, 
where  he  felt  certain  that  his  learning  and 
talents  would  insure  him  wealth  and  great 
renown.  But  since  Linnaeus  could  not  now 
prolong  his  stay  at  Leyden,  Boerhaave  desired 
him  to  take  a  letter  from  himself  to  his  friend, 
Professor  Burmann,  at  Amsterdam,  the  port 
whence  Linnaeus  had  proposed  to  sail  for 
Sweden.  He  found  Burmann,  then  much 
engaged  upon  his  Botany  of  Ceylon,  ^  so  over- 
whelmed with  work  of  several  kinds,  that 
courtesy  seemed  to  require  that  he  should 
make  the  call  short.  It  was  evident  that 
nothing  but  the  letter  from  that  great  scientific 
potentate  Boerhaave,  at  Leyden,  had  pro- 
cured him  admission  to  Burmann's  presence. 
On  withdrawing,  however,  he  was  invited 
to  call  again.  At  the  second  call  he  found 
the  Amsterdam  professor  less  preoccupied. 
They  went  into  the  botanic  garden.  At  the 
end  of  this  interview  Burmann  was  over- 
whelmed with  a  sense  of  the  unexampled 
skill  of  this  young  Swede  in  botany.  He  had 
learned  so  much  of  him  in  that  one  hour  as 
to  see  that  he  must  secure,  if  possible,  his 
help   in   the   finishing   of   his   great   book   of 

1  Thesaurus  Zeylanicus,  4to,  1737. 


46  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

Ceylonese  botany.  Linnaeus  was  invited  to 
take  up  his  abode  with  Burmann  for  the  period 
of  his  sojourn  in  Amsterdam,  and  he  accepted 
the  bidding.  He  had  been  there  about  two 
months  when  he  received  a  call  from  one  of 
the  merchant  princes  of  Amsterdam,  George 
Cliffort.  He  was  a  gentleman  of  culture  as 
well  as  of  great  wealth,  and  had  a  very  noble 
garden  and  conservatories  abounding  in  rare 
plants  from  the  Indies  and  other  remote 
places.  But  his  errand  with  Linnaeus  was 
not  botanical.  He  was  something  of  an 
invalid  and  melancholy.  His  regular  physi- 
cian was  Boerhaave,  at  Leyden.  On  a  late 
visit  to  him,  Boerhaave  had  advised  him  that 
his  ailments  were  chieflv  resultant  from  his 
princely  ways  of  living;  that  he  could  not  do 
better  than  employ  the  services  of  a  brilliant 
young  Swedish  physician,  a  specialist  in 
dietetics,  at  present  the  guest  of  Professor 
Burmann.  He  advised  him  to  take  Doctor 
Linnaeus  for  body  physician  into  his  own 
house,  and  place  himself  under  his  direction 
as  to  diet.  This  was  Cliffort's  motive  in 
calling  upon  Linnaeus.  The  outcome  of  it 
was  an  agreement  between  them;  and  the 
young  physician  botanist  was  soon  quite 
luxuriously  domiciled  with  Cliffort,  and  under 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  47 

good  pay.  Charmed  with  the  CUffortian 
garden  and  conservatories,  and  seeing  there 
many  a  plant  unknown  to  botanists,  Linnaeus 
counselled  the  preparation  and  publication 
of  an  illustrated  folio,  that  might  fitly  be 
entitled  the  Hortus  Cliffortianus,  in  which 
the  rarities  and  novelties  growing  there  should 
be  brought  to  the  knowledge  of  the  world 
botanical.  Of  course  the  proposition  de- 
lighted Cliffort  and  the  work  was  done.  That 
most  luxurious  of  all  Linnseus's  works,  the 
Hortus  Cliffortianus,  he  assures  us,  was  written 
in  nine  months.  It  was  published  in  Amster- 
dam in  1737,  when  Linnaeus  was  thirty  years 
old.  But  besides  this,  there  had  already 
been  published,  since  Linnaeus  had  come  to 
Amsterdam,  the  Bibliotheca  Botanica  and  the 
Fundamenta  Botanica,  in  the  year  1736;  and 
there  now  followed  the  Flora  Lapponica,  the 
Genera  Plantarum  and  the  Critica  Botanica, 
all  in  the  year  1737;  some  of  them  issued  at 
Amsterdam,  others  at  Leyden.  This  repre- 
sents the  most  wonderful  beginning  at  botan- 
ical authorship  of  which  there  is  any  record. 
Here  were  seven  learned  and  forceful  books, 
two  in  folio  and  five  in  octavo,  all  given  to 
the  public  within  two  years,  almost  a  library 
of  botany,   and  that  a  new  botany,   and  so 


48  CAROLUS  LINNMUS 

easy  to  comprehend,  that  almost  any  educated 
person  could  now  acquire  proficiency  in  botany 
by  these  books  alone  as  a  guide.  The  system 
was  a  new  one;  evidently  a  rival  system  to 
that  of  Tournefort,  which  had  now  been 
dominant  for  forty  years.  All  the  botanical 
world  was  in  amazement;  and  the  author, 
having  now  been  three  years  abroad,  and 
having  made  his  personal  impression  upon 
nearly  all  the  botanists  of  London  and  of 
Paris,  as  well  as  upon  those  of  Germany  and 
Holland,  went  home  to  Sweden,  there  at  first 
to  suffer  the  adverse  consequences  of  fame, 
and  afterwards  to  enjoy  its  benefits. 


PRACTISES    MEDICINE    IN    STOCKHOLM 

To  suffer,  I  say,  the  consequences  of  renown; 
for  Linnaeus  had  now  to  realize  the  truthful- 
ness of  what  was  said  by  the  Great  Master 
of  long  ago,  namely,  that  ''a  prophet  is  not 
without  honor,  save  in  his  own  country,  and 
in  his  own  house."  At  the  University  of 
Upsala  now,  as  aforetime,  there  was  no  hope 
of-  preferment  for  Linnaeus.  His  books  did 
not  as  yet  bring  him  income.  He  must 
settle  down  to  the  practice  of  medicine,  and 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  49 

he  chose  Stockholm,  the  capital,  and  chief 
city  of  the  kingdom.  There  he  was  a  stranger. 
There  was  not  one  friend  to  recommend  him; 
and,  as  he  himself  records  it,  no  one  would 
employ  him,  even  by  committing  a  sick 
servant  to  his  care.  His  system  of  botany 
began  also  to  be  assailed  in  public  vigorously 
and  tellingly.  Just  across  that  arm  of  the  sea 
that  separates  between  Sweden  and  Russia,  at 
St.  Petersburg  Professor  Siegesbeck  had  WTitten 
and  distributed  a  book  in  which  the  Linnsean 
system  of  botany  was  arraigned  severely,  and 
with  so  much  point  that  many  people  in  Sweden 
thought  that  Linnaeus  had  been  philosophic- 
ally and  botanically  annihilated.^     He  admits 

^  Referring  to  the  attack  of  Siegesbeck  Linna?us,  wrote  thus 
from  Hartecamp  to  his  friend  Haller:  "This  author  has  been 
very  hard  upon  me.  I  wish  he  had  written  these  things 
when  I  was  first  about  pubHshing.  I  might  have  learned 
when  young,  what  I  am  forced  to  learn  at  a  more  advanced 
age,  to  abstain  from  writing,  to  observe  others,  and  to  hold 
my  tongue.  What  a  fool  I  have  been  to  waste  so  much 
time,  to  spend  my  days  and  nights  in  a  study  which  yields 
no  better  fruit,  and  makes  me  the  laughing-stock  of  all  the 
w^orld!  His  arguments  are  nothing;  but  his  book  is  filled 
with  exclamations  such  as  I  never  before  met  with.  W^hether 
I  answer  him  or  keep  silence,  my  reputation  must  suffer. 
He  cannot  understand  argument.  He  denies  the  sexes  of 
plants.  He  charges  my  system  with  indelicacy;  and  yet  I 
have  not  written  more  about  the  polygamy  of  plants  than 
Swammerdam  has  about  bees.  He  laughs  at  my  characters, 
4 


50  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

that  he  almost  believed  that  himself;  and, 
as  now  the  tide  had  set  strongly  in  his  favor 
as  a  medical  practitioner  at  Stockholm,  he 
had  resolved  to  abandon  forever  the  service 
of  Flora  and  devote  himself  wholly  to  that 
of  iEsculapius.  And  the  tide  of  Linnseus's 
fortune  in  medicine  rose  higher.  One  and 
another  of  the  nobility  became  numbered 
among  his  patients,  and  at  last,  the  queen 
herself;  and  now,  as  he  said  in  a  letter  to  a 
friend,  no  one  who  was  ill  could  get  well  it 
seemed,  without  his  help. 

On  September  15,  1739,  he  thus  writes  to 
Haller  from  Stockholm:  ''I  began  to  get  money, 
and  was  busy  in  attendance  on  the  sick,  from 
four  in  the  morning  till  late  in  the  evening; 
nor  were  my  nights  uninterrupted  by  the  calls 
of  my  patients.  Aha!  said  I,  ^Esculapius  is  the 
giver  of  all  good  things;  Flora  bestows  nothing 

and  calls  upon  all  the  world  to  say  if  anybody  understands 
them.  I  am  said  to  be  ignorant  of  scientific  terms.  He 
judges  me  by  the  principles  of  Rivinus,  and  hundreds  of  the 
vilest  scribblers.  Inasmuch  as  this  man  humbles  me,  so  do 
you,  whose  learning  and  sense  have  been  made  sufficiently 
evident,  exalt  me.  It  distresses  me  to  read  the  commenda- 
tions you  are  pleased  to  heap  upon  so  unworthy  an  object. 
I  wish  there  might  ever  be  any  reason  to  expect  that  I  could 
evince  my  gratitude  and  regard  for  you.  I  hope  life  will 
be  granted  me,  to  give  some  proof  of  my  not  being  quite 
unworthy." 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  51 

upon  me  but  Siegesbecks!  I  took  my  leave  of 
Flora,  condemned  my  too-numerous  observa- 
tions a  thousand  times  over  to  eternal  oblivion, 
and  swore  never  to  give  any  answer  to  Sieges- 
beck.'^ 

APPOINTED  PROFESSOR  AT  UPSALA 

Court  influence  now  procured  him  the 
comfortable  position  of  Physician  to  the 
Admiralty.  After  that  the  death  of  Dr. 
Roberg,  professor  of  medicine  at  Upsala, 
opened  the  way  to  Linnseus's  promotion  to 
a  professorship  at  that  university.  It  was 
that  of  medicine,  and  that  of  botany  was, 
at  the  time,  held  by  Linnseus's  former  antag- 
onist Rosen.  The  two  professors,  now  equal 
in  official  rank,  became  reconciled  and,  with 
the  full  consent  of  the  authorities,  exchanged 
professorships.  Linnaeus  was  now  again  a 
botanist.  He  was  still  a  young  man,  only 
some  thirty-four  years  of  age,  and  had  lived 
out  not  quite  half  his  days.  The  after  j^ears, 
those  of  fruition,  did  not  produce  as  much  of 
importance  to  botany  as  the  earlier  period 
had  yielded.  There  came  out  in  1751  the 
Philosophia  Botanica,  partly  of  the  nature 
of  a  recension  and  enlargement  of  two  of  his 


52  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

early  books,  the  Fundamenta  Botanica  and 
the  Critica  Botanica.  It  is  one  of  his  most 
important  and  imperishable  books.  In  1753 
appeared  the  largest  and  most  comprehensive 
of  his  works,  the  Species  Plantarum.  During 
the  remaining  years  of  his  life  Linnaeus  was 
largely  occupied  with  the  preparation  of  new 
editions  of  almost  all  his  works,  the  public 
demand  for  which  was  very  great. 


INFLUENCE    OF    LINN^US   UPON    BOTANY 

It  is  not  possible  to  convey  an  idea  of  what 
Linnaeus  accomplished  for  the  advancement 
of  botany  without  presenting,  in  brief  outline, 
a  view  of  what  had  been  done  before  him. 
That  there  was  not  much  botany  before  Lin- 
naeus is  a  fable  that  gained  popular  credence 
in  rural  districts  a  half  century  ago.  One 
of  the  earliest  books  which  our  Linnaeus  pub- 
lished was  the  Bibliotheca  Botanica.  It  con- 
tains the  titles  of  1000  volumes,  by  almost  as 
many  different  botanists,  most  of  which  books 
he  thought  an  indispensable  part  of  a  working 
botanist's  equipment;  and  his  own  works, 
on  almost  every  page,  abound  in  citations 
of  those  of  his  predecessors.     The  first  foun- 


CAROLUS  LINNMUS  53 

dations  of  scientific  botany  had  been  laid  by 
Caesalpino,  an  Italian  physician  and  uni- 
versity professor  of  botany,  124  years  before 
Linnaeus  was  born.  He  selected  his  granite 
blocks  of  principle  so  well,  and  laid  them  so 
securely,  that  the  superstructure  of  modern 
systematic  botany  rests  upon  them.  Every 
variation  of  botanical  system  that  has  been 
builded  in  the  last  324  years  has  rested  on 
the  Caesalpinian  foundation,  i.  e.,  that  in  the 
fruit  and  seed  of  plants  we  have  the  key  to 
their  affinities.  Not  one  of  the  great  geniuses 
botanical  in  later  times  who  have  most  ad- 
vanced the  science  has  questioned  the  validity 
of  that  principle.  Not  one  has  yet  dared  to 
predict  that  the  Caesalpinian  foundations  are 
likely  ever  to  be  abandoned  as  insecure. 

The  earlier  disciples  of  Csesalpino  made 
many  amendments  and  signal  improvements 
of  his  system,  through  further  study  of  floral 
structure,  as  furnishing  yet  other  clews  to 
plant  affinities.  The  summing  up  of  these 
many  improvements  was  made  by  Tournefort, 
whose  Elements  of  Botany,  published  in  1694, 
111  years  after  Csesalpino's  great  work,  and 
thirteen  years  before  the  birth  of  Linnaeus, 
took  the  whole  botanical  world  captive,  and 
held  undisputed  sway,  until  everywhere  but 


54  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

in  France,  the  native  land  of  Tournefort,  they 
were  superseded  by  the  system  of  Linnseus. 

To  the  botanists  present  who  are  unread 
in  the  history  of  our  science,  nothing  will  be 
more  surprising  than  the  information  that, 
with  the  great  Tournefort,  who  founded  upon 
the  flower  the  most  universally  approved 
system  of  botany  which  up  to  that  time 
had  been  presented,  the  flower  was  hardly 
anything  more  than  we  know  as  the  corolla. 
Of  the  functions  of  stamens,  stigmas  and 
styles  he  was  ignorant,  confessed  his  ignor- 
ance, and  regarded  them  as  wholly  insig- 
nificant things,  hardly  to  be  seriously  taken 
note  of.  The  flower  and  the  corolla  were  with 
him  almost  synonymous;  and  yet  so  uncer- 
tain was  he  in  his  identification  of  the  corolla 
that  where,  as  in  all  the  Aracese,  it  is  absent 
he  took  the  spathe  for  the  corolla;  while  in 
such  apetalous  things  as  the  castor  bean, 
he  regarded  the  brightly  colored  stigmas  as 
the  corolla.  Such  extremely  crude  ideas  of 
floral  structure  were  those  of  Tournefort  to 
the  end  of  his  career;  and  he  died  when  the 
infant  Linnaeus  was  one  and  one  half  years 
old. 

Now  the   Linnsean  doctrine  of  the   flower 
and    that    of    Tournefort   represent    opposite 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  55 

extremes.  To  be  more  specific :  while  Touriie- 
fort's  conception  of  the  flower  as  an  organism 
is  about  as  crude  and  imperfect  as  can  well 
be  imagined,  that  of  Linnaeus  is  almost  per- 
fect. In  the  view  of  the  former  the  one 
important  organ  is  the  corolla,  the  stamens 
and  stigmas  nothing,  or  next  to  nothing; 
according  to  Linnaeus,  the  stamens  and  stigmas 
with  the  ovary,  are  the  only  essential  organs 
of  the  flower,  the  corolla  relatively  unimpor- 
tant. All  the  world  botanical  now  understands 
that  the  philosophy  of  floral  structure  upheld 
and  most  effectively  promulgated  by  Linnaeus 
was  the  right  one.  The  actual  discovery 
and  demonstration  of  this  new  and  revolu- 
tionary anthology  are  not  attributable  to 
Linnaeus.  In  the  year  that  the  small  boy 
Linnaeus  left  home  for  the  Latin  school  at 
Wexio  a  new  incumbent  was  installed  into 
that  professorial  chair  at  Paris  which  Tourne- 
fort  had  occupied.  The  new  professor  had 
been  one  of  the  pupils  of  that  celebrity.  His 
name  was  Sebastian  Vaillant.  The  subject 
of  his  inaugural  address  was  the  Structure 
of  Flowers.  In  this  address,  soon  afterwards 
printed,  Tournefort's  anthology  was  com- 
pletely undermined,  and  what  was  offered  in 
the  place  of  it  became  the  accepted  anthology 


56  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

of  the  remaining  80  years  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  of  the  whole  of  the  nineteenth,  and 
is  thus  far  that  of  the  twentieth.  In  other 
phrase,  that  doctrine  of  the  organization  and 
the  functions  of  the  flower  which  Vaillant  set 
forth  as  new  in  the  year  1717,  has  held  undis- 
puted sway,  without  significant  augmentation 
or  amendment,  for  now  190  years.  Every 
botanist  will  readily  perceive  that  this  is  a 
very  rare  encomium.  Every  one  will  realize 
that  to  very  few  can  it  have  been  given  to 
lay  down  the  fundamentals  of  plant  taxonomy. 
Those  fundamentals,  as  we  have  all  been 
taught,  and  as  our  forefathers  were  taught, 
are  really  only  two,  namely,  carpology  and 
anthology.  Csesalpino  in  the  year  1583  estab- 
lished the  true  carpology.  Vaillant  in  1717, 
the  true  anthology.  These  were  the  two 
great  things  to  be  done  before  there  could 
be  a  true  and  philosophic  system  of  botanical 
classification.  Now  which  of  these  two  names 
is  the  greater  in  scientific  botany  may  be  open 
to  learned  dispute;  but  so  long  as  the  accepted 
foundations  of  botany  remain  in  place,  suc- 
cessful competitors  for  their  exalted  rank 
there  can  be  none. 

Five  years  after  having  published  this  mas- 
terpiece of  plant  organography  Vaillant  died. 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  57 

His  death  occurred  on  his  fifty-third  birthday. 
He  also  died  unthanked  for  the  greatest  of 
several  great  things  that  he  had  done  for 
botany.  All  the  world  botanical  still  idolized 
the  memory  of  the  great  and  popular  Tourne- 
fort;  and  it  resented  that  virtual  overthrow  of 
his  whole  system  which  this  remarkable  former 
student  of  his  had  accomplished.  Universally, 
and  bitterly  they  charged  him  with  ingrati- 
tude. And  so  that  inaugural  address,  in  which 
this  far  greater  man  than  Tournefort  had 
given  to  his  science  the  very  best  that  was  in 
him,  became  an  offense  to  the  blind  invidious 
multitude.  When  they  should  have  praised 
him,  they  blamed  him;  and  he  lay  down  and 
died. 

But  afar  in  the  north,  in  the  land  of  giants 
mythical  and  giants  real,  there  was  an  un- 
gigantic  youth  of  great  mind  and  of  noble 
soul,  who  would  champion  most  successfully 
the  cause  of  Sebastian  Vaillant;  and  in  so 
doing  create  a  new  system  of  botany  that 
should  supersede  that  of  Tournefort. 

It  was  in  the  year  1729,  when  Linnaeus 
was  in  his  twenty-third  year,  and  a  student 
at  Upsala,  that  he  first  became  acquainted 
with  Vaillant's  great  tract;  learning  from  it 
that  those  obscure  and  long-neglected  stamens 


58  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

and  pistils  were  sexual  organs  and  the  only 
really  important  parts  of  any  flower.  This 
being  true,  it  was  plain  to  him,  as  it  had  been 
to  Vaillant,  that  Tournefort's  classes  of  plants 
established  upon  the  corolla  as  the  essential 
organ  were  unphilosophically  and  untenably 
based,  and  must  fall.  From  that  day  Linnaeus 
determined  to  work  out  a  new  system  of  classes 
and  orders  of  plants,  on  the  basis  of  stamens 
and  pistils  as  the  most  important  floral 
organs.  The  result  was  24  classes  of  plants 
established  upon  characteristics  of  the  stamens, 
instead  of  the  22  classes  of  Tournefort  dis- 
tinguished by  differences  in  the  structure  of 
the  corolla.  The  Linnsean  classes  were  very 
much  more  easily  learned  than  the  Tourne- 
fortian.  His  Class  I  embraced  all  genera  of 
plants  the  flowers  of  which  have  but  a  single 
stamen;  Class  II,  those  which  have  two 
stamens,  and  so  on  up  to  Class  X,  when  other 
considerations,  still  in  part  numerical,  were 
seized  upon.  Any  mere  beginner  in  botany, 
with  a  plant  in  flower  before  him,  could  deter- 
mine its  class  without  even  opening  the  book. 
If  the  flower  exhibited  five  stamens  the  plant 
was  sure  to  belong  to  some  genus  of  Linnseus's 
Class  V.  If  the  same  flower  showed  also  two 
pistils,  that  indicated  as  unmistakably  Order  2 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  59 

of  Class  V.  No  other  system  of  plant  classifi- 
cation ever  invented  made  the  beginnings  of 
botany  so  easy;  no  other  ever  was  so  immensely 
popular.  But  what  is  much  more  to  the 
credit  of  the  Linnsean  classes  and  orders  than 
the  popular  applause  with  which  they  once 
were  hailed  is  the  fact  that  the  determination 
of  plants  under  them  necessitated  close  in- 
spection of  all,  even  the  minutest  and  obscur- 
est parts  of  every  floral  structure;  trusting 
that  in  these  minute,  obscure  and  hitherto 
neglected  organs  there  would  be  found  some 
of  the  very  best  indexes  of  affinity.  This  line 
of  investigation,  so  important  to  all  taxonomy, 
Linnaeus  was  the  very  first  to  carry  into  prac- 
tice and  make  universal.  It  will  be  difficult 
to  bring  the  average  botanist  of  to-day  to  a 
realization  of  how  great  an  epoch  in  botany 
Linnaeus  created  when  he  began  examining 
the  stamens  of  every  plant,  with  the  purpose 
of  ascertaining  into  what  one  of  his  24  pro- 
posed classes  of  flowering  plants  each  generic 
type  must  fall.  And  though  it  be  true  that 
the  classes  and  orders  of  Linnaeus  fell  into 
disuse  three-quarters  of  a  century  ago,  it  is 
true  to-day  that  every  botanist,  from  the  mere 
beginner  in  taxonomy  to  the  most  accomplished 
master  of  it,  if  he  have  a  new  and  unknown 


60  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

plant  in  hand  for  determination,  makes  his 
final  appeal  to  stamens  and  pistils.  These, 
by  peculiarities  of  structure,  will  tell  the 
plant's  relationship  in  many  an  instance,  both 
promptly  and  decisively.  In  this  procedure, 
every  botanist  who  lives  is  distinctly  a  disciple 
of  Linnaeus;  for  he,  putting  Vaillant's  prin- 
ciples into  taxonomic  practice,  first  inaugurated 
the  method,  and  eventually  brought  to  pass 
its  universal  recognition  and  its  permanent 
establishment.  When  in  the  year  1735,  with 
those  manuscripts  of  his  new  botanical  system, 
Linnaeus  went  to  Germany  and  Holland,  he 
had  now  for  seven  years  been  scrutinizing 
carefully  and  industriously  the  stamens  of 
everything  that  had  come  to  hand.  By  dint 
of  those  seven  years  of  industrious  investiga- 
tion of  these  organs  he  had  not  only  become 
very  expert  in  this  line,  but  he  was  the  only 
man  in  the  world  who  knew  anything  about 
the  morphology  of  stamens.  He  was  now 
to  the  oldest  and  most  experienced  system- 
atists  of  Europe  a  perfect  marvel  on  account 
of  the  readiness  with  which  he  could  solve 
for  them  some  of  their  most  perplexing  taxo- 
nomic puzzles.  I  can  not  stop  to  cite  more 
than  a  single  instance.  In  one  of  the  larger 
Dutch    herbaria    there  was  a  rare  specimen 


CAROLUS  LINNMUS  61 

of  the  leaves  and  flowers  of  a  certain  oriental 
tree.  The  bark  of  this  kind  of  tree  had  been 
known  in  Europe  as  a  commercial  importa- 
tion for  I  think  some  2000  years.  They  called 
it  cinnamon.  As  a  generic  type  the  tree  had 
been  named  in  Latin  Cinnaviomum.  The 
professor  gave  Linnaeus  the  information  that 
these  were  the  leaves  and  flowers  of  the  cin- 
namon tree;  but  what  were  the  natural 
affinities  of  the  tree?  Had  it  consanguinity 
with  any  other  known  tree?  To  what  was  it 
related?  These  were  questions  which  not  the 
most  expert  botanists  could  answer.  The  fruit 
of  the  tree  was  not  yet  known,  and  therefore 
could  not  be  appealed  to.  The  flowers  were 
small  and  insignificant.  Linnaeus  took  one 
of  those  small  dried-up  flowers,  subjected  it  to 
moisture,  so  that  he  could  get  a  view  of  the 
anthers  without  breaking  them,  then,  looking 
at  these  alone,  was  able  to  answer,  with  the 
most  perfect  assurance,  that  this  cinnamon 
tree  is  a  very  near  relative  of  the  familiar 
sweet  bay  of  southern  Europe,  a  species  of  the 
genus  Laiirus.  The  man's  frequent  solving  of 
enigmas  like  this,  in  the  presence  of  the  most 
learned  and  capable  botanists  of  the  world, 
brought  it  to  pass  that  he  was  spoken  of  every- 
where among  the  Germans  and  Flemish  as  the 


62  CAROLUS  LINNMUS 

little  oracle;  for  when  he  gave  a  decision  about 
the  affinity  of  any  imperfectly  known  plant, 
he  was  admitted  to  be  correct.  It  was  as  if 
an  oracle  had  spoken.  These  brilliant  pro- 
nouncements must  also  have  prepared  the 
way  for  that  great  success  which  his  publica- 
tions met  with,  and  that  ready  adoption  of 
his  new  system  which  followed  almost  every- 
where despite  its  character  as  radical  and 
revolutionary. 

If,  then,  Linnaeus,  at  the  time  when  he 
began  publishing  the  fundamentals  of  his 
new  system  occupied  a  place  wholly  unique 
among  botanists  then  living  as  to  knowledge 
and  understanding  of  floral  structures  of  all 
kinds,  so  that  the  oldest  and  ablest  among 
them  stood  in  speechless  admiration  of  his 
superlative  attainments,  there  was  forthwith 
exerted  by  him  a  most  salutary  influence 
upon  the  important  part  of  plant  description. 
The  revolution  which  he  at  once  brought 
about  in  the  art  of  generic  diagnosis  w^as 
perhaps  the  most  priceless  of  his  several  strong 
contributions  to  phytography.  In  his  Genera 
Plantarum  of  the  year  1737,  every  genus  is 
so  well  characterized  in  words,  that  plates 
and  figures  illustrating  them  are  not  needed. 
The  group  which  Linnaeus  takes  for  a  genus  is 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  63 

even  more  clearly  defined  by  his  few  descrip- 
tive sentences  than  is  a  genus  of  Tournefort, 
in  which  the  defects  of  its  description  are 
eked  out  by  a  fine  quarto  plate  representing 
the  type.  And  the  reason  why  Linnaeus 
surpassed  immeasurably  every  author  who 
had  preceded  him  in  the  practice  of  generic 
diagnosis  was  that  he  had  all  their  under- 
standing and  appreciation  of  calyx,  corolla 
and  fruit,  and  added  to  that  his  mastery  of 
stamens,  stigmas  and  styles,  the  very  names 
of  which  were  unknown  to  the  generations 
that  had  preceded  him,  and  hardly  yet  know^n 
to  the  most  celebrated  of  his  contemporaries. 
In  the  later  editions  of  the  Genera  Plantarum 
no  improvement  is  to  be  noted  in  his  diag- 
noses. They  were  models  as  he  gave  them  out 
at  first,  at  least  as  viewed  from  the  stand- 
point of  Linnseus's  acknowledged  greater 
master,  Csesalpino.  They  are  still  essentially 
the  models  of  generic  disgnosis  with  all  who 
still  hold  the  Csesalpinian  doctrine  that  flower 
and  fruit  are  to  supply  the  only  recognized 
data  for  the  establishment  of  classes  and  genera 
of  plants.  Even  George  Bentham,  who  lived 
more  than  a  century  after  the  time  of  Linnaeus, 
and  was  the  supreme  master  of  generic  diag- 
nosis that  the  nineteenth  century  knew,  was 


64  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

strictly  a  Linnsean  in  this  regard;  so  that 
here,  as  at  many  another  important  point 
in  the  most  recent  botany,  the  genius  of  the 
great  Linnaeus  rules  and  directs. 

Fellow  members  of  the  Botanical  Society 
of  Washington,  if  this  had  been  a  meeting  of 
our  own,  and  not  that  of  two  other  learned 
societies  in  joint  session  with  us,  I  should 
have  preferred,  as  I  said  at  the  beginning, 
to  discuss  some  one  of  Linnseus's  greater 
books;  taking  it  as  a  text  from  which  to  set 
forth  his  deeds;  his  many  benefactions  to  our 
science.  To  some  it  will  doubtless  appear 
anomalous  that  here  not  so  much  as  the 
briefest  abstract  of  his  various  reforms  in 
nomenclature  should  be  given;  especially  since, 
in  the  minds  of  so  many  botanists  of  recent 
decades,  those  reforms  are  thought  to  be  the 
most  important  service  that  Linnaeus  rendered 
to  botany.  Several  of  the  most  commonly 
received  opinions  about  him  as  nomenclator 
are  absolutely  groundless.  Several  principles 
of  nomenclature  now  almost  everywhere  ap- 
proved were  under  his  severest  reprehension. 
Inasmuch  as  I  myself  was  the  prime  mover  in 
the  direction  of  what  has  now  come  to  be 
well  known  abroad  as  the  Neo-American 
school  of  nomenclature,  I  may  be  permitted 


CAROLUS  LINN^US  65 

to  say  that  during  more  than  twenty  years 
past  I  have  steadily  and  unwaveringly  been 
of  the  opinion  that  to  attempt  to  legislate 
upon  nomenclature  is  but  futility,  if  not 
folly,  until  every  participant  in  every  nomen- 
clatorial  conclave  shall  have  familiarized  him- 
self with  all  that  Linnseus  said,  and  said  with 
such  commanding  authority,  upon  this  sub- 
ject. So,  then,  the  discussion  of  Linnaeus 
as  nomenclator,  at  least  in  my  understanding 
and  appreciation  of  him,  could  not  alone  be 
done  within  the  time  allotted  us  to-night. 
To  omit  it  altogether  was  imperative. 

The  same  limitations  have  precluded  my 
calling  attention  even  briefly  to  Linnaeus  as 
evolutionist,  as  ecologist,  as  medical  botanist, 
or  as  one  who  contributed  much  to  the  advance- 
ment of  what  is  now  commonly  spoken  of  as 
applied  botany  in  general. 

Of  the  real  merits  of  Linnaeus  they  know 
little  who,  observing  that  his  classes  and 
orders  are  become  obsolete,  and  that  neither 
his  idea  of  a  genus  is  that  of  more  recent 
botany,  nor  his  conception  of  a  species,  con- 
clude that  his  figure  must  by  and  by  grow  dim 
on  the  horizon  of  botanical  history.  I  say, 
they  who  know  little  of  his  real  merits  may 
give    place    to    such    forebodings.     But    they 

5 


66  CAROLUS  LINN^US 

who  fully  realize  what  he  accomplished  in  so 
many  different  directions  to  the  great  and 
lasting  advantage  of  our  science  will  be  rather 
disposed  to  wish  that  an  equal  of  Linnaeus 
might  soon  be  born;  and  might  think  it  well 
that  the  natal  day  of  the  matchless  Swede 
should  be  held  sacred  not  only  once  in  each 
century,  but  a  hundred  times  in  every  hundred 
years. 


LINN^US  AS  A  ZOOLOCIIST 


lEWED  in  a  broad  way,  the  services 
of  Linnaeus  to  zoology  were  of  sev- 
eral kinds. 

The  first  and  greatest,  though 
at  the  time  of  its  conception  regarded  as 
relatively  unimportant,  was  the  invention  of 
what  has  long  been  known  as  the  binomial  or 
Linnaean  system  of  nomenclature.  The  con- 
ception of  a  permanent  name  for  each  type  of 
organized  beings,  thereby  giving  to  the  natur- 
alist a  concise  method  of  indicating  each  unit 
of  the  system,  was  so  great  an  advance  on  any 
previous  method  of  handling  zoological  species 
that  it  amounted  to  a  complete  revolution 
in  methods;  comparable  to  that  for  the 
arithmetical  sciences,  which  followed  the  adop- 
tion of  the  decimal  Arabic  symbols  in  place  of 
the  clumsy  Roman  notation  of  numerals. 

That  previous  zoologists,  like  Rumphius, 
had  more  or  less  inadvertently  approximated 
to  this  system  at  times,  while  giving  names 
to  animals,  does  not  diminish  the  credit  due 
to   Linnaeus  for  erecting  the  method  into  a 

1  This  section  has  been  contributed  by  Dr.  William  H.  Dall. 

(67) 


68  LINNJ^US  AS  A  ZOOLOGIST 

definite  system  emphasizing  the  principles 
of  permanency  and  priority,  and  elaborating 
its  details. 

The  second  service  was  that  of  holding  up 
the  animated  creation  as  an  interrelated  whole. 
This  grasp  of  the  subject  would  be  impossible 
to  a  naturalist  of  the  present  day  were  the 
multitudinous  units  of  the  animal  kingdom  now 
known  presented  to  him  in  the  chaotic  state 
in  which  Linnasus  found  the  little  microcosm 
which  he  had  to  deal  with.  The  progress,  by 
the  Linnsean  methods,  since  his  time,  has  been 
so  great;  anatomical,  ecological  and  embryo- 
logical  discoveries  have  so  illuminated  the 
subject;  that  we  are  prone  to  look  with  amuse- 
ment on  the  crude  classification  which  alone 
in  his  time  was  possible,  without  appreciating 
the  instances  it  contains  of  really  astonishing 
insight  into  the  true  relation  of  organized 
beings. 

It  is  only  when  we  compare  the  Linnsean 
classification  with  the  contemporaneous  ab- 
surdities of  such  antagonists  as  Jacobus  Theo- 
dorus  Klein,  who  in  bewigged  pomposity  stares 
at  us  from  the  frontispiece  of  his  ridiculous 
^'Tentamen/'  that  we  can  appreciate  the 
quality  of  the  genius  of  the  immortal  Swede. 

A   third    manner,   and   by   no   means   the 


LINN^US  AS  A  ZOOLOGIST  69 

least  important,  in  which  Linnaeus  influenced 
zoological  science,  was  through  his  friends, 
associates  and  pupils.  We  all  know  what 
the  personal  influence  of  Louis  Agassiz  did  for 
science  in  America.  Something  of  the  same 
sort  emanated  from  the  personality  of  Lin- 
naeus in  his  time. 

In  the  days  of  his  early  struggles  it  must 
have  been  evident,  or  we  should  not  read  of 
how  such  men  as  Rothman,  Stobseus,  Cel- 
sius, Rudbeck  and  Reuterholm  exerted  them- 
selves to  promote  the  fortunes  and  facilitate 
the  studies  of  the  poor  country  parson's 
son.  A  little  later,  as  he  began  to  win  a 
footing,  we  find  the  greater  scientists  with 
whom  he  was  brought  in  contact  giving  him 
a  cordial  welcome;  and,  from  men  like  Grono- 
vius,  Boerhaave,  Burmann,  van  Royer  and 
Cliflort  in  Holland,  Artedi  in  Sweden,  Jussieu 
in  France;  Haller  in  Germany  and  Dillenius 
in  England,  such  recognition  was  no  feeble 
testimony  to  his  influence  and  worth.  Still 
more  conclusive  are  the  relations  to  Linnaeus 
of  such  ornaments  of  the  nobility  as  Counts 
Tessin  and  Gyllenborg,  and  her  Majesty 
Queen  Ulrica,  worthy  precursors  of  the  liberal- 
minded  nobles  of  to-day,  and  their  leader, 
His  Majesty  of  Sweden,  always  foremost  in 


70  LINN^US  AS  A  ZOOLOGIST 

promoting  science,  exploration  and  the  arts, 
to  the  true  glory  of  his  kingdom. 

From  every  civiUzed  nation,  as  well  as 
from  Sweden,  Linnaeus  drew  pupils.  Those 
conversant  with  the  dawn  of  science  in  the 
modern  sense,  will  find  familiar  the  names 
upon  the  roll. 

First,  as  true  martyrs  of  science,  who  gave 
their  lives,  by  pestilence  or  accident  in  foreign 
lands  for  the  promotion  of  discovery,  are 
Ternstrom  who  died  in  China;  Hasselquist 
in  Smyrna;  Forskal  in  Arabia;  Loefling  in 
South  America;  and  Falk  in  Tartary. 

Those  more  fortunate,  but  not  less  daring, 
who  adventured  in  foreign  lands  and  by  a  safe 
return  were  enabled  to  reap,  in  their  lifetimes, 
a  reward  of  merit,  were  Peter  Kalm  in  North 
America;  Rolander  in  Surinam;  Toren  in 
Malabar;  Osbeck  in  China;  Sparrmann  in 
South  Africa;  Thunberg  in  eastern  Asia  and 
Japan;  Niebuhr  in  Egypt;  Gmelin  in  Siberia; 
and,  in  various  parts  of  Europe,  Koehler, 
Alstroemer,  von  Troil,  Fabricius,  and  Solander. 

I  have  mentioned  but  a  prominent  few 
among  many.  A  little  leaven  leaveneth  the 
whole  lump.  That  influence  which  drew 
and  held  students,  which  inspired  them  to 
their    utmost    efforts,    faithful    in    the    quest 


LINN^US  AS  A  ZOOLOGIST  71 

of  knowledge  even  unto  death;  which  helped 
to  mould  a  second  generation  to  carry  on  the 
w^ork  of  research;  which  affected  more  or 
less  deeply  every  student  of  nature  in  the  last 
quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  has 
not  yet  spent  all  its  force;  that  influence  was 
no  trifling  gift  to  mankind. 

The  details  of  work  accomplished  by  Lin- 
naeus, as  by  each  and  every  one  of  his  suc- 
cessors, fluctuate  in  value  under  the  keener 
scrutiny  and  more  refined  methods  of  those 
who  follow  after.  The  fate  of  theories  lies 
in  the  lap  of  the  Gods. 

But  the  spirit  which  inspired  them;  the 
ardor  which  hands  on  the  torch  as  the  runner 
sinks  exhausted  by  the  way;  the  devotion  to 
truth  and  disregard  of  self  imparted  by  a  great 
teacher;  and  which  shall  endure  while  a  human 
mind  and  heart  exist  to  cherish  them — these 
are  gifts  immortal. 


LINNiEUS  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 


OT  more  than  two  decades  have 
passed  since  with  most  people 
who  had  interested  themselves 
in  such  matters,  and  with  quite 
all  who  had  not,  evolutionistic  theory  and 
Darwinism  w^ere  synonymous;  the  supposi- 
tion being  that  Charles  Darwin  had  been  the 
original  inventor,  as  well  as  the  strong  pro- 
mulgator, of  the  hypothesis  of  the  descent  of 
present-time  species  of  living  things  from 
earlier  types.  That  misunderstanding  no- 
where now  prevails;  and  while  a  multitude 
of  talkers  and  writers  on  all  sorts  of  topics 
use  freely  the  term  evolution,  Darwinism  is 
less  frequently  mentioned;  for  it  is  coming 
to  be  realized  somewhat  generally  that  there 
were  '^  Darwinians"  not  a  few,  not  only  before 
the  Darwin  of  the  nineteenth  century,  but 
even  before  that  almost  as  remarkable  grand- 
sire  Darwin  of  the  eighteenth.  There  were 
evolutionists  among  the  Greeks  of  five  and 
twenty  centuries  ago,  and  even  among  the 
earliest  luminaries  of  Christian  philosophy  and 
theology  of  a  period  only  less  remote;  while 
after  the  revival  of  learning,  and  of  an  interest 

(73) 


74  LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

in  nature  study,  evolutionistic  ideas  found 
expression  not  infrequently;  and  of  late, 
historians  of  science  are  bringing  all  this  to 
hght. 

The  catalogue  of  more  or  less  distinctly 
evolutionistic  naturalists  who  lived  before 
the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  who 
gave  some  expression  to  their  ideas  on  this 
topic,  is  not  a  short  one;  but  the  name  of 
Linnaeus  has  not,  in  so  far  as  I  can  learn,  been 
placed  on  that  list  hitherto,  except  very  hypo- 
thetically.^ 

For  any  possible  expression  of  views  as  to 
the  origins  of  groups  of  plants  and  the  per- 
manency or  mutability  of  such  groups,  one 
would  naturally  look,  not  to  his  many  volumes 
of  taxonomic  and  descriptive  writings,  but  to 
just  such  a  work  as  the  Philosophia  Botanica. 
Yet  there  one  looks  in  vain  for  any  expression 
that  is  not  positively  and  unmistakably  con- 
trary to  the  idea  of  evolution. 

In  respect  to  the  origin  of  genera,  that  which 
he  says — and  wdth  Aristotelian  brevity  and 
conciseness — is  this:  ''Every  genus  is  natural 
and  was  in  the  beginning  of  things  created 

1  In  the  environment  of  the  idea  of  evolution  Linnaeus 
may  be  considered  not  as  a  positive  but  as  one  of  the  negative 
factors. — Osborn,  From  the  Greeks  to  Darwin,  p.  128. 


LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST  75 

such."  And  because  of  this — which  might 
well  enough  be  called  the  supernatural  rather 
than  the  natural  origin  of  genera — because  of 
this  origin,  he  argues  that:  ''No  one  genus 
is  ruthlessly  to  be  divided  and  treated  as 
if  there  were  two;  neither  are  any  two  or 
more  to  be  put  together  as  if  constituting 
only  one." 

In  the  light  of  such  a  pronouncement  one 
could  not  attribute  to  Linnaeus  any  notion  of 
the  gradual  evolution  of  such  groups  of  species 
as  constitute  genera;  and  if  a  genus  is  to  have 
such  origin,  so,  by  the  necessities  of  logic,  are 
species  also  made;  and  he  says:  ''All  species 
are  certain  diversities  of  form  which  the 
Infinite  Being  created  so  in  the  beginning; 
which  forms,  according  to  immutable  laws  of 
generation,  produce  always  their  like."  From 
this  he  proceeds  to  establish  more  firmly,  if 
possible,  the  immutability  of  species  by  defin- 
ing generation  as  being  the  actual  "continu- 
ation of  the  species;"  and  he  concludes  by 
calling  attention  to  how,  as  by  necessity,  this 
origin  of  all  species  precludes  the  possibility 
of  any  new  species  ever  arising.  And  thus 
under  the  heading  of  species  does  our  author 
seem  to  have  builded  even  a  more  insur- 
mountable   wall    against    the    possibility    of 


76  LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

one's  successfully  claiming  him  for  the  camp 
of  the  evolutionists. 

There  remains  one  other  category  of  plant 
forms,  of  lower  rank  than  species,  recognized 
by  Linnaeus,  that  of  varieties.  Unless  I  err, 
he  claimed  that  he  had  been  the  first  of 
systematists  to  recognize  varieties  and  to 
teach  the  distinctions  between  variety  and 
species.  Will  he  so  define  variety  as  to  leave 
an  opening  for  the  possible  development  of 
a  species  out  of  that  w^hich  started  forth  at 
first  as  a  mere  variety?  If  we  use  our  own 
reason,  and  credit  Linnaeus  with  not  momen- 
tarily forgetting  to  use  his,  we  may  not  look  to 
see  him  contradict  himself  quite  so  promptly. 
He  has  said,  and  that  in  the  paragraph  next 
preceding  the  definition  of  variety,  that  all 
species — not  most  of  them  but  all  of  them — 
were  constituted  such  by  the  Creator  in  the 
very  beginning  of  the  existence  of  plant  life 
and  form.  He  will  not  subvert  this  propo- 
sition; at  least,  not  in  the  very  next  sentence. 
His  notion  of  a  variety  is,  that  it  is  such 
alteration  of  a  species  as  may  have  been 
induced  by  changed  conditions  of  climates, 
soil,  temperature,  exposure  to  or  shelter  from 
high  winds  or  any  such  items  of  mere  environ- 
ment; and  he  does  not  fail  to  add  that,  on 


LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST  77 

the  restoration  of  the  plant  to  its  old  environ- 
ment, it  reverts  to  the  original  type  form. 
One  sees  at  a  glance  that  this  is  not  our 
twentieth  century  idea  of  a  botanical  variety; 
but  it  is  the  Linnsean  idea,  and  with  that 
alone  we  are  here  concerned.  The  man  makes 
so  small  account  of  varieties,  from  the  taxo- 
nomic  point  of  view,  that  he  concludes  his 
discussion  of  the  topic  with  an  apology  for 
giving  them  place  and  mention  in  his  books 
of  systematic  botany.  ''Variation,"  he  says, 
''is  in  such  matters  as  the  size  of  the  plant, 
doubleness  of  flower,  a  crisped  or  curled 
foliage,  a  difference  of  color,  odor,  flavor, 
etc."  But  he  adds:  "Many  varieties  of 
plants  are  in  favor  with  gardeners,  and  agri- 
culturists, others  with  florists,  while  still 
others  are  in  esteem  with  pharmacists."  From 
these  expressions  it  is  plain  that  Linnaeus 
did  not  consider  these  changeable  and  even 
transient  forms  worthy  of  any  serious  con- 
sideration by  botanists  proper,  and  admitted 
them  to  his  books  only  as  in  condescension 
to  the  wants  of  those  classes  of  tradespeople 
whom  he  mentions.  It  may  here  be  added 
that  in  almost  all  more  recent  botan}^,  varieties 
such  as  Linnaeus  had  in  mind  when  he  wrote 
the  definition  find  no  place.      One  looks  for 


78  LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

the  account  of  them,  if  anywhere,  in  the 
calendars  and  catalogues  of  gardeners,  pomol- 
ogists,  nurserymen  and  florists. 

I  have  long  understood  how  very  definitely 
and  absolutely  this  fine  book,  the  Philosophia 
Botanica,  excludes  every  idea  of  a  possibly 
evolutionary  origin  for  any  species  of   plant. 

And  yet,  Linnaeus  was  an  evolutionist. 
Nor  is  this  so  passing  strange  in  a  world 
where  men  in  great  numbers — even  some  of 
high  standing  and  great  ability — say  one 
thing  and  think  the  very  opposite. 

That  he  entertained  doubts  as  to  the  truth- 
fulness of  the  proposition  that  everything  that 
ought  to  be  called  a  species  had  been  made 
as  it  is  in  the  beginning,  is  a  discovery  that 
I  made  quite  fortuitously.  In  the  study 
of  some  species  of  Thalictrum  I  had  need  to 
consult  a  certain  page  of  the  Species  Plan- 
tarum.  Reading  his  account  of  T.  flavum, 
and  next  below  it  that  of  T.  lucidum,  his 
concluding  note  regarding  the  species  last 
named  quite  startled  me.  His  Latin  sentence 
here,  as  in  many  another  place,  is  highly 
figurative,  quite  after  the  style  of  many  a 
classic  rhetorician  and  poet;  and  I  read  it 
again,  and  very  carefully,  to  see  if  the  idea 
which  the  first  reading  conveyed  to  my  mind 


LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST  79 

was  quite  that  which  the  author  meant  to 
convey.  There  could  be  no  doubt.  Putting 
it  into  plain  EngHsh  prose;  making  it  read 
as  one  would  now  write  the  same  thought, 
his  note  on  Thalictrum  lucidum  is  this :  ' '  The 
plant  is  possibly  not  so  very  distinct  from 
T.  flavum.  It  seems  to  me  to  be  the  product 
of  its  environment." 

As  helping  toward  a  full  understanding  of 
this  pregnant  remark  it  must  be  said  that 
the  species  flavum  inhabits  the  cool  moist 
meadows  of  northern  Europe,  while  lucidum 
belongs  to  southern  France  and  to  Spain. 
Each  has  then  decidedly  its  own  environment. 
Each  was  known  to  be  equally  established 
as  a  permanent  and  indigenous  plant  form. 
Linnseus's  reason  for  naming  flavum  as  the 
parent  and  lucidum  as  the  offspring  was  a 
reason  no  better  than  this:  T.  flavum  was 
of  his  own  northern  country  and  he  knew  it 
well.  T.  lucidum  was  a  southerner,  and  he 
was  less  familiar  with  it;  probably  had  never 
seen  it  but  in  a  northern  garden.  That  was 
all.  It  was  a  thing  far  enough  from  being 
amenable  to  his  definition  of  a  variety.  It 
seemed  a  species;  yet  he  doubted  that  it  was 
any  more  than  a  daughter  species  to  Thalic- 
trum flavum.     The  one  had   been   created  a 


80  LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

species  in  the  beginning,  the  other  was  prob- 
ably not  so  old;  more  likely  to  have  come  into 
existence  away  down  among  the  more  arid 
hills  of  Spain ;  but  it  had  come  to  stay.  Rather 
many  plant  forms  that  had  been  reckoned  good 
species  before  Linnseus  and  that  are  now  again 
so  considered  everywhere  today,  were  with 
Linnseus  mere  varieties  of  other  species.  But 
he  declined  so  to  treat  Thalictrum  lucidum. 
If  the  relation  between  this  denizen  of  the 
fervid  South  and  his  plant  of  the  frigid  Scan- 
dinavian peninsula  should  be  declared  nothing 
more  than  the  relation  between  a  specific 
type  and  its  variation,  botanists  would  be 
asking  how  long  before  he  would  make  an 
end  of  species  altogether.  He  was  not  him- 
self convinced  that  it  was  a  mere  variety, 
and  so  he  retains  it  as  a  probable  species, 
yet  to  his  half  secret  thinking  not  as  first 
created  such,  but  the  descendant  of  another 
species. 

Familiar  as  I  had  been  for  many  years  with 
the  Species  Plantarum  as  a  book  of  reference, 
this  one  discovery  upon  which  I  had  now 
stumbled,  seemed  so  much  like  a  new  revela- 
tion of  the  mind  of  Linnseus  that  within  a  very 
few  days  I  had  read  every  one  of  the  1682 
pages  of  the  edition  of  the  year  1764  in  search 


LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST  81 

of  other  kindred  expressions  regarding  the 
possibility  of  the  descent  of  some  species 
from  others. 

Only  three  pages  away  from  the  record  of 
his  thought  about  the  origin  of  the  Thalictrum, 
under  Clematis  maritima  occurs  this  remark: 
'^Magnol  and  also  Ray  have  adjudged  this 
to  be  a  variety  of  C  flammula.  I  should 
rather  think  it  is  derived  from  C.  recta  under 
altered  conditions."  Now  while  this  remark, 
standing  by  itself,  might  indicate  an  opinion 
that  the  plant  under  discussion  was  a  mere 
variety  of  Clematis  recta,  yet  Linnaeus  did 
not  so  place  it  in  this  or  any  other  of  his 
books.  He  gives  it  the  rank  of  a  species, 
distinctly,  and  must  needs  have  done  so  in 
view  of  his  own  definition  of  varieties  as 
transient  forms,  developed  mostly  under  culti- 
vation. Clematis  maritima,  as  its  name  indi- 
cates, is  a  seaside  species,  unchanged  in  its 
character  from  immemorial  ages.  He  knew 
all  this  and  held  it  to  be  not  a  variety  but  a 
derivative  species;  not  one  so  created  in  the 
beginning. 

Again,  next  to  the  familiar  Achillcea  ptar- 

mica,  of  almost  all  Europe,  he  places  the  name 

and  description  of  Achillcea  alpina  known  only 

from  the  mountains  of  Siberia.     No  botanical 
6 


82  LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

authority  has  ever  seemed  to  think  of  this 
as  possibly  a  mere  variety  of  A.  ptarmica  of 
Europe;  no  more  does  Linnaeus;  but  while 
according  it  full  specific  rank,  and  as  if  forget- 
ful of  all  he  had  said  in  the  Philosophia 
Botanica  upon  such  matters,  he  appends 
to  his  technical  account  of  A.  alpina  this 
most  evolutionistic  suggestion:  ''May  not 
the  Siberian  mountain  soil  and  climate  have 
moulded  this  out  of  A.  ptarmica f^^^ 

Among  the  more  elegant  flowering  plants 
adorning  the  borders  of  subsaline  marshes 
southward  in  the  United  States  is  one  which 
Linnaeus  denominated  Hibiscus  virginicus.- 
It  is  exclusively  North  American,  and  even 
here  of  somewhat  restricted  range.  A  similar 
species,  of  distribution  as  limited  and  peculiar, 
belongs  to  southern  Europe,  inhabiting  the 
shores  of  the  Adriatic  Sea.  Now  between 
these  two  kinds  of  Kosteletzkya  occupying 
widely  sundered  continents,  and  neither  one 
much  more  than  local,  each  along  its  own 
little  line  of  seaboard — between  these  two 
Linnaeus  apprehends  the  existence  of  a  more 
intimate  relationship  than  the  most  advanced 

^  An  locus  potuerat  ex  praecedenti  formasse  banc?     Species 
Plantarum,  2  ed.,  p.  1266. 

-  Kosteletzkya  virginica  of  more  recent  authors. 


LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST  83 

evolutionists  of  the  twentieth  century  would 
be  likely  to  affirm.  He  remarks  a  ver}^  close 
superficial  Hkeness  between  them;  so  close 
that,  were  that  all,  he  would  declare  them 
to  be  specifically  one  and  the  same;  but,  in 
the  characters  of  their  little  seed  pods  or 
capsules  they  are  so  unlike  that  on  this  account 
separate  specific  rank  must  be  accorded  both, 
and  so  he  places  them;  concluding,  however, 
with  this  thoroughly  evolutionistic  query: 
^'May  not  the  Venetian  species  have  sprung 
from  the  Virginian?"^  The  more  probable 
theory  of  the  evolutionist  of  our  time  would  be, 
that  both  are  descendants  from  some  common 
ancestor  that  had  a  more  general  distribution 
and  is  now  extinct.  But  that  Linnaeus  was 
disposed  to  regard  the  Virginian  species  as 
having  been  created  such  as  it  is,  and  the 
Venetian  as  having  originated  from  that  in 
after  times,  is  enough  to  warrant  our  regarding 
him  as  an  evolutionist. 

I  shall  cite  but  one  more  instance  of  Lin- 
nseus's  tacit  acceptance  of  species  as  derived 
from  other  species  through  altered  environ- 
ment. The  case  is  that  of  the  cultivated 
beet.     The  genus  Beta,  in  his  view,  consists 

^  Species  Plantarum,  2  ed.,  p.  981. 


84  LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

of  two  species  only:  One  the  Beta  maritima, 
indigenous  to  Old  World  seashores,  a  wild 
plant  altogether,  and  never  under  cultivation, 
and,  in  this  wild  condition  not  given  to  varia- 
tion, but  always  one  and  the  same  thing.  The 
second  species  is  Beta  vulgaris,  one  not  known 
as  a  wild  plant  anywhere,  but  existing  from 
immemorial  ages  in  gardens  and  fields  as 
a  cultivated  plant,  and  that  under  many 
marked  varieties.  Now  the  short  and  easy 
method  of  dealing  with  a  genus  like  this — 
a  method  many  an  indifferent  systematist 
would  follow — would  be  to  make  the  guess 
that,  as  only  one  wild  species  is  known,  all 
the  cultivated  things  of  that  genus  are  but 
so  many  varieties  of  the  one  species.  The 
whole  tendency  of  Linnseus's  mind  was  in 
this  direction,  that  is,  of  reducing  both  genera 
and  species  to  a  minimum.  But  there  was 
a  difficulty  here  with  these  two  members  of 
the  genus  Beta,  the  simple  and  unvarying 
wild  kind,  and  the  extremely  variable  one  of 
cultivation.  The  cultivated  plant  was  hardy; 
often  ran  wild,  as  it  were,  by  escape  from 
cultivation;  but  these  reverts  never  were 
found  to  be  equivalent  to  Beta  maritima  or 
anywhere  near  it.  The  Beta  vulgaris  self- 
sown   and   run   wild   for  years,   and   greatly 


LINNJEUS  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST  85 

altered  from  its  cultivated  condition,  j-et 
invariably  retained  a  character  of  its  own; 
so  that  no  one  would  think  of  calling  it  Beta 
mariiima;  therefore,  with  Linnaeus  the  col- 
lection of  the  varieties  of  cultivation  must  be 
admitted  as  forming  a  distinct  species  of 
which  the  native  original  was  unknown,  and 
probably  long  ages  ago  extinct.  To  this 
view  of  the  case  he  was  perhaps  inclined;  yet 
not  so  strongly  as  to  preclude  his  offering,  in 
a  note,  this  very  different  suggestion:  ''Pos- 
sibly born  of  Beta  maritima  in  some  foreign 
country."^  The  force  of  this  alternative  prop- 
osition will  be  lost  to  any  one  who  does  not 
recall  that,  according  to  the  Linnsean  account 
of  a  variety.  Beta  vulgaris,  if  it  originated  from 
seed  of  Beta  maritima,  originated  not  as  a 
variety  but  as  a  species;  and  such  an  origin 
as  he  thinks  the  cultivated  beet  may  have  had 
from  the  wild  one  would  amount  to  nothing 
less  than  what  is  now  called  a  mutation;  one 
of  those  sudden  leaps  or  transitions  from  one 
thing  to  another  which  we  have  been  learning 
to  take  into  account  only  lately. 

A  like  instance  confronted  Linnseus  under 
the  genus  Cynara,  the  type  of  which  genus 

1  Species  Plantarum,  2  ed.,  p.  322. 


86  LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

is  the  true  artichoke,  and  has  been  cultivated 
from  no  one  knows  how  far  anterior  to  all 
written  records.  Under  this  old  type  species, 
Cynara  scolyjnus,  Linnaeus  admits  three 
marked  varieties.  Then  he  proceeds  to  name 
and  define  a  second  species,  a  very  distinct 
one,  but  with  a  well-authenticated  history 
as  having  arisen  and  come  into  existence  as 
a  seedling  of  the  other  species.  He  inti- 
mates that  he  would  have  liked  to  be  able  to 
consider  it  a  hybrid, ^  but  as  its  parentage  as 
a  hybrid  could  apparently  lie  nowhere  but 
between  two  of  the  three  varieties  of  the  other 
species,  the  fact  would  remain  that  it  was  a 
species  derived  not  from  two  parent  species 
but  from  one  alone.  It  was  another  of  those 
abruptly  derivative  species  in  which  Linnaeus 
was  disposed  to  believe  despite  those  hard 
half-theologic  definitions  of  his  Philosophia 
Botanica. 

In  the  progress  of  these  inquiries  into  the 
mind  of  Linnaeus  as  to  the  origin  of  species 
nothing  that  I  have  come  upon  has  more 
deeply  interested  me  than  his  remark  upon 
the  two  species  of  sundew  common  in  northern 
Europe,    Drosera   rotundifolia   and   D.    longi- 

^  Species  Plantarum,  2  ed.,  p.  1159. 


LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST  87 

folia.  They  are  very  peculiar  plants,  uncom- 
monly interesting  from  several  points  of 
view,  and  have  in  recent  years  profoundly 
engaged  organographers  and  physiologists; 
but  Linnaeus  was  most  interested  in  their 
ecology  as  bearing  upon  the  problem  of  their 
genealogy.  Both  are  bog  plants,  though  far 
enough  from  being  found  in  every  northern 
bog.  They  seem  to  be  particular  about  the 
kind  of  soil,  the  amount  of  moisture,  the  nature 
of  the  exposure,  and  also  the  plant  associates 
amid  which  they  will  establish  their  habita- 
tion; and  both  species  are  at  perfect  agreement 
as  to  all  special  details  of  bog  environment 
which  they  demand;  for  where  one  is  found, 
there  too  is  the  other.  They  are  much  alike 
in  size,  mode  of  growth,  degree  of  hariness, 
form  and  color  of  flowers,  etc.,  but  the  leaf 
blades  in  one  are  round,  while  in  the  other 
they  are  so  much  elongated  as  to  be  called 
narrowly  oblong;  and  this  one  strong  dis- 
tinguishing mark  is  constant.  There  are  no 
plants  among  them  to  show  leaves  intermediate 
between  orbicular  and  oblong.  They  ought 
to  be,  and  I  think  that  by  all  botanists  except 
Linnaeus,  both  before  his  day  and  ever  since, 
they  have  been  held  distinct;  and  even  he  did 
not  positively  affirm  the  contrary,  but  only 


88  LJNN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

expressed  a  doubt;  and  the  sole  reason  he 
has  for  doubting  the  vaUdity  of  D.  longi- 
folia  is,  that  it  and  its  mate  species  always 
occur  under  precisely  the  same  conditions 
and  together.^  It  is  such  a  reason  as  none  but 
a  confirmed  evolutionist  could  give;  the  ex- 
pression, perhaps  unguarded,  of  a  mind  no 
longer  very  patient  of  the  opinion  that  two 
species  of  the  same  genus  can  have  the  same 
native  environment.  A  creative  fiat  could, 
of  course,  as  readily  make  two  species  of  a 
genus  suited  to  certain  conditions  as  one,  and 
as  easily  twenty  as  two;  and  so  no  believer 
in  the  special  creation  of  all  species  could 
have  felt  this  doubt  about  the  sundews  to 
which  Linnaeus  gave  expression. 

It  has  been  thought  that  the  mind  of 
Linnaeus  as  to  the  absolute  fixity  of  species 
underwent  a  change  between  the  years  1751 
and  1762,  though  only  in  so  far  as  to  induce 
him  to  admit  the  origin  of  more  recent  species 
by  hybridization.2  My  own  impression  is 
that  few  if  any  of  the  plants  thought  by 
Linnaeus  to  be  hvbrids  are  at  all  of  that 
origin,    according    to    the    views    of    modern 

1  Habitat  ubique  cum  prsecedente;  an  itaque  satis  diversa 
species?     Species  Plantarum,  1  ed.,  p.  282;  2  ed.,  p.  403. 
^  Osborn,  From  the  Greeks  to  Darwin,  p.  129. 


LINNMUS  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST  89 

botanists,  but  rather,  for  the  most  part  at 
least,  perfectly  distinct  and  genuine  species. 
But  what  I  have  herein,  I  think,  clearly  shown 
is  not  only  that  Linnaeus  accepted  and  admitted 
to  his  books,  as  species,  forms  he  thought  of 
as  developed  from  other  species,  not  by  any 
crossing,  but  through  mere  environment  — 
natural  environment  in  some  instances,  arti- 
ficial in  others.  And  this  bent  of  his  mind 
was  so  strong  that  he  could  scarcely  admit 
two  members  of  a  genus  to  be  specifically  dis- 
tinct if  found  to  occur  always  under  the  same 
physical  conditions.  Again:  w^hile  it  is  gener- 
ous to  allow  to  the  great  nature  student  the 
eleven  years  between  1751  and  1762  in  which 
to  have  changed  his  views  a  little  as  to  the 
fixity  of  all  species,  the  simple  fact  is  that 
nowhere  were  the  views  set  forth  in  the 
Philosophia  Botanica  of  1751  more  squarely 
contradicted  than  in  the  Species  Plantarum 
of  1753.  There  were  two  years  intervening 
between  the  dates  on  the  respective  titles; 
but  most  likely  he  was  engaged  in  writing  the 
works,  at  least  in  part,  simultaneously.  But 
the  great  man  was  writing  and  pubhshing  as 
other  men  of  genius  had  done  before  him, 
under  environment. 

In  a  letter  written  by  Linnaeus  as  early  as 


90  LINNJEUS  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST 

1747,  addressed  to  his  most  intimate  and 
trusted  friend,  J.  G.  Gmelin,  author  of  Flora 
Sibirica,  he  gives  confidential  expression  to  the 
restraints  under  which  he  feels  that  he  is  obliged 
to  write  on  matters  that  impinge  upon  the 
domain  of  theology;  to  his  unwillingness  to 
face  the  disapproval  of  the  Lutheran  and 
orthodox  ecclesiastics  who,  in  his  day,  ruled 
the  destinies  of  all  seats  of  learning  in  Sweden. 
He  says  to  Gmelin : 

^'You  disapprove  my  having  located  Man 
among  the  Anthropomorphi.  But  man  knows 
himself.  Now  we  may,  perhaps,  give  up 
those  words.  It  matters  little  to  me  what 
name  we  use;  but  I  demand  of  you,  and  of 
the  whole  world,  that  you  show  me  a  generic 
character — one  that  is  according  to  generally 
accepted  principles  of  classification — by  which 
to  distinguish  between  Man  and  Ape.  I 
myself  most  assuredly  know  of  none.  I  wish 
somebody  would  indicate  one  to  me.  But, 
if  I  had  called  man  an  ape,  or  vice  versa,  I 
should  have  fallen  under  the  ban  of  all  the 
ecclesiastics.  It  may  be  that  as  a  naturalist 
I  ought  to  have  done  so."^ 

^  This,  though  written  as  we  have  said  in  1747,  was  never 
pubhshed  until  1861.  The  original  Latin  text  of  the  letter 
occurs  in  "Joannis  Georgii  Gmelini,  Reliquiae  quae,  supersunt 


LINN^US  AS  AN  EVOLUTIONIST  91 

The  good  orthodox  Lutheran  ecclesiastics 
that  ruled  the  Swedish  university  in  every 
department  of  it  would  be  thoroughly  content 
with  the  pronouncements  of  the  Philosophia 
Botanica;  and  that  was  a  book  any  scholar 
would  read  with  pleasure  and  with  profit; 
but  nothing  like  that  could  be  said  of  the 
Species  Plantarum.  Here,  at  least,  in  foot- 
notes, or  even  in  places  more  obscure,  very 
briefly,  veiled  in  figures  of  rhetoric,  and  even 
under  the  further  protection  of  question 
marks,  he  could  express  his  profounder  con- 
victions and  feel  secure.  And  he  was  secure, 
indeed. 

commercii  epistolici  cum  Carolo  Linnseo  Alberto  Hallero 
Guilielmo  Stellero  et  al.,  Floram  Gmelini  Sibericam  ej usque 
Iter  sibericum  potissimum  concernentis,  ex  mandato  et 
sumtibus  Academise  scientiarum  Caisarese  Petropolitanae 
publicandas  curavit  Dr.  Guil.  Henr.  Theodor  Plieninger; 
Stuttgart,  1861,"  p.  55,  and  is  as  follows:  "Non  placet 
quod  Hominem  iter  anthropomorpha  collocaverim;  sed  homo 
noscit  se  ipsum.  Removeamus  vocabula,  mihi  perinde  erit, 
quo  nomine  utamur;  sed  quaero  a  Te  et  Toto  orbe  differ- 
entiam  genericam  inter  hominem  et  Simiam,  quae  ex  jirin- 
cipiic  Historise  naturalis.  Ego  certissime  nullam  novi; 
utinam  aliquis  mihi  unicam  diceret.  Si  vocassem  hominem 
simiam  vel  vice  versa  omnes  in  me  conjecissem  theologos. 
Debuissem  forte  ex  lege  artis." 


UBRARX 
dtal«C»iU9« 


